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DEBATERS'  HANDBOOK  SERIES 


CHILD  LABOR 


DEBATERS' 
HANDBOOK  SERIES 


Enlargement  of  the  United  States  Navy 
(3d  ed.  rev.  and  enl.) 

Direct  Primaries 

Capital  Punishment 

Commission  Plan  of  Municipal  Govern- 
ment (2d  ed,  rev.  and  enl.) 

Election  of  United  States  Senators 

Income  Tax     (2d  ed.  rev.  and  enl.) 

Initiative  and  Referendum  (2d  ed.  rev. 
and  enl.) 

Central  Bank  of  the  United  States 

Woman  Suffrage 

Open  versus  Closed  Shop 

Child  Labor 

Other  volumes  in  preparation 


Each  volume,  one  dollar  net 

V 


Debaters'  Handbook  Series 


SELECTED  ARTICLES 


ON 


CHILD    LABOR 


COMPILED  BY 
EDNA   D.   BULLOCK 


•  :  .  .' • 


MINNEAPOLIS 
THE  H.  W.  WILSON  COMPANY 

1911 


.^0 


.»,*■« . •  -  •« 


.Ufiti^ 


EXPLANATORY  NOTE 

This  handbook  is  designed  especially  for  the  student  and 
citizen  rather  than  for  the  debater.  It  is  published  in  response 
to  requests  for  a  compilation  that  would  give  in  some  compact 
form  some  reliable  information  on  the  various  phases  of  the  child 
labor  problem. 

No  one  overshadowing  topic  for  debate  has  been  selected. 
The  subject  is  replete  with  topics  that  are  under  daily  discussion 
among  people  who  are  interested  in  social  welfare. 

According  to  Owen  R.  Lovejoy,  Secretary  of  the  National 
Child  Labor  Committee,  the  unsolved  problems  connected  with 
child  labor  resolve  themselves  into : — 

1.  What  classes  of  children  should  be  entirely  eliminated  as  a 

factor  in  the  industrial  problem? 

2.  From   what   industries    should   all   children   be   eliminated? 

3.  What  regulations  should  govern  the  conditions  of  the  chil- 

dren who  may  wisely  be  employed? 

4.  What  is  to  be   done  with  those  excluded   from   industry? 
These    propositions    fairly    cover    the    field    of    discussion. 

Among  the  questions  that  they  bring  up  are  these:— r 

1.  Should  vacation  permits  be  issued? 

2.  Should  home  labor  for  gain  be  permitted? 

3.  Is  the  age  limit  of  14  years  sufficient  protection  for  children? 

4.  Should  industrial  and  vocational  education  be  made  a  dom- 

inant feature  of  public  school  instruction? 
A  practical    form   of   discussion    is   that   which   undertakes   to 
decide  whether  a  particular  state  has  the  best  possible  child 
labor  law. 
The    literature   of   this   subject   is   voluminous   and   is   being 
augumented  rapidly.     Much  that  is  useful  has  been  of  necessity 
excluded.     The   bibliography   is   also   carefully    selected   with   a 
view  to  the  inclusion  of  more  recent  material.     It  is  arranged 
in  a  roughly  classified  order  which  is  also  followed  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  the  reprints. 

It  is  believed  that  this  volume  will  give  the  general  inquirer 
sufficient  up-to-date  material  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the 
average  discussion. 

241275 


CONTENTS 

Bibliography 

Bibliographies     ix 

Historical    References     ix 

General  References 

a.  Physical,   Social  and   Industrial    Effects   of   Child 
Labor    ix 

b.  Relation   to    Education xiii 

Descriptive  References 

a.  Special   Trades    and    Industries    xiv 

b.  Special    Sections    of    the    United    States    and    other 
Countries    x  y 

Legislation     xvii 

lxtrodl'ction    i 

Selected  Articles  ' 

-^'Abbott,     Edith.       Early    History    of    Child    Labor     in 

America Journal    of    Sociology        3 

^Ellis,  Leonora   Beck.     Movement  to  Restrict  Child  Labor 

Arena        9 

/    Adler,  Felix.    Child  Labor  in  the  United  States  and  Its 

Great  Attendant  Evils.  Annals  of  the  American  Academy       18 
4^Folks,    Homer.     Poverty  and    Parental    Dependence   as 

an  Obstacle  to   Child   Labor   Reform 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy      25 

^    Freiberg,  Albert  H.    Some  of  the  Ultimate  Physical  Ef- 
fects  of   Premature    Toil 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy      34 

N  Lovejoy,     Owen    R.       Unsettled    Questions    about    Child 

Labor Annals   of  the  American   Academy      40 

Cheney,     Howell.      Practical     Restrictions     on     Child 

Labor  in  Textile  Industries 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy      54 

^  Freiberg,    Albert    H*.    Effects    of    Improper    Posture    in 

Factory  Labor Annals  of  the  American  Academy      68 

^Harmon,   William    E.    Handicaps   in    Later  Years   from 

Child   Labor.. Annals   of  the   American  Academy      74 

N  Lovejoy,  Owen  R.  Child  Labor  and  Family  Disintegra- 
tion       Independent      78 


viii  CONTENTS 

Chesser,    Elizabeth   Sloan.      Half-Timers    in   the   Factories 

Westminster  Review      83 

^Kirkland,  James  H.  School  as  a  Force  Arrayed  against 

Child  Labor Annals  of  the  American  Academy      87 

\  Lovejoy,  Owen  R.  Will  Trade  Training  Solve  the  Child- 
Labor  Problem  ? North   American  Review      89 

Adams,  Myron  E.    Children  in  American  Street  Trades. 

.Annals  of  the  American  Academy      9? 

Van  der  Vaart,  Mrs.  Harriet.    Children  in  the  Glass  Works 

of  Illinois Annals  of  the  American  Academy     106 

NHutchinson,     Woods.     Overworked    Children    on    the 

Farm  and  in  the  School 

J Annals  of  the  American  Academy    1 12 

Van  Kleeck,  Mary.     Child  Labor  in  Home   Industries 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy    1 16 

Goldmark,    Pauline.     Child  Labor  in   Canneries 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy     120 

Van    Kleeck,    Mary.    Child    Labor    in    New    York    City 

Tenements Charities  and  the  Commons     123 

Nichols,  Francis  H.  Children  of  the  Coal  Shadow   .... 

McClure     133 

Lord,  Everett  W.  Child  Labor  in  the  Textile  Industries 

and  Canneries  of  New  England 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy     141 

Parker,  Lewis  W.  Condition  of  Labor  in  Southern  Cot- 
ton Mills Annals  of  the  American  Academy     148 

Roberts,    Peter.    Child   Labor  in    Eastern   Pennsylvania 

Outlook    152 

Kelley,   Florence.     Has    Illinois   the    Best   Laws   in    the 

Country  for  the  Protection   of  Children  ? , 

American  Journal  of  Sociology     158 

^IvOvejoy,  Owen  R.  Test  of  Effective  Child-Labor  Legis- 
lation  Annals  of  the  American  Academy    168 

Beveridge,  Albert  J.  Child  Labor  and  the  Nation 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy     175 

'^hat    Constitutes    Effective    Child   Labor    Laws 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy     185 

NStandard  Child   Labor  Law. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy    190 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


An  asterisk  (♦)  preceding  a  reference  indicates  that  the  entire 
article  or  a  part  of  it  has  been  reprinted  in  this  volume. 

Bibliographies 

Kansas  City.  Public  Library  Quarterly.  8:  29-32.  Ap.  '08.  Bibliog- 
raphy of  Municipal  Betterment. 

United  States.   Library  of  Congress — Division   of   Bibliography. 
List   of    Books    with    References   to    Periodicals    Relating   to 
Child    Labor. 
For  sale  by  the  Superintendent  of  Documents.     15  cents. 

Historical  References 

♦American  Journal  of  Sociology.  14:  15-37.  Jl-  '08.  Early  His- 
tory of  Child  Labor  in^ America.  Edith  Abbott. 

Annals  of  the  American   Academy.   27:   312-26.   Mr.   '06.    Child 
Labor  Problem^a  Study  in  Degeneracy.  A.  J.  McKelway. 
Brief  history  of  factory  and  child  labor  legislation  in  England. 

Arena.  28:  305-17.  S.  '02.  Cry  of  the  Children.  B.  O.  Flower. 
Historical   description   of   English    conditions. 

♦Arena.  28:  370-8.  O.  '02.  Movement  to  Restrict  Child  Labor.  L. 
B.  Ellis. 

General  References 

a.     Physical,  Social  and  Industrial  Effects  of  Child  Labor. 
Books,  Pamphlets  and  Documents 

Adams,  Thomas  Sewall,  and  Sumner,  Helen  L.  Labor  Problems. 
Chap.  n.  Woman  and  Child  Labor.  Macmillan,  New  York. 
1905. 

Addams,  Jane.  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace.  Chap.  VI.  Protection  of 
Children  for  Industrial  Efficiency.  Macmillan,  New  York.  1907. 

American  Economic  Association.  Publications.  3d.  Series.  6:  880- 
903.  1906.  Employment  of  Women  and  Minors.  F.  R.  Fair- 
child. 


n/ 


v/ 


X  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Clark,  Davis  Wasgatt.  American   Child  and  Moloch  of  Today. 
Jennings  and  Graham.   Cincinnati.   1907. 
Bibliography,    pp.    75-81. 

Conference  of  Charities  and  Corrections,  Minneapolis.  1907.  Pro- 
ceedings, pp.  196-209.  Child  Labor  and  Philanthropy.  Owen 
R.  Love  joy. 

Conference  of  Charities  and  Corrections,  Richmond.  1908.  Pro- 
ceedings, pp.  351-63.  Child  Labor  and  Citizenship.  A.  J.  Mc- 
Kelway. 

Conference  of  Charities  and  Corrections,  Richmond.  1908.  Pro- 
ceedings, pp.  346-51.  Why  the  Children  are  in  the  Factory. 
Jean  M.  Gordon. 

Gibbins,  Henry  de  Beltgens.  Economic  and  Industrial  Progress 
of  the  Century,  pp.  315-37.  Factory  Workers  of  Great  Britain. 
Linscott,  Toronto.  1903. 

Kelley,  Florence.  Some  Ethical  Gains  through  Legislation.  Chap. 
I.  Right  to  Childhood.  Chap.  II.  The  Child,  the  State  and  the 
Nation.  Macmillan,  New  York.  1905, 

Mangold,  George  B.  Child  Problems,  pp.  159-217-  Child  Labor. 
Macmillan,  New  York.  1910, 

Massachusetts.  Commission  on  Industrial  and  Technical  Educa- 
tion. Report.  1906.  (Senate  Document.  349-) 

Mitchell,  John.  Organized  Labor.  Chap.  XVI.  Work  of  Women 
and  Children.  1903. 

National  Education  Association.  Proceedings.  1909:  726-33.  Child 
in  Industry.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 
Reprinted  by  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee. 

Nearing,  Scott.  Solution  of  the  Child  Labor  Problem.  Moffat. 
1911. 

New  York  (State).  Labor  Bureau.  Annual  Report.  1904:  265-87. 
Commissioner  McMackin's  Answer  to  the  Child  Labor  Com- 
mittee. 

Riis,  Jacob.  Children  of  the  Poor.  pp.  181 -8.  Scribners,  New 
York.  1892. 

Spargo,  John.  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children.  Macmillan,  New  York. 
1906. 

United  States.   Census,  Bureau  of  the.   Child  Labor  in  the  United 
States.    Bulletin  69,  1907. 
May  be  obtained  from  the  Census  Bureau. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xi 

United  States.  Labor,  Bureau  of.  Report  on  the  Condition  of 
Woman  and  Child  Wage-earners  in  the  United  States.  Vol. 
i-date.  1910-date.    Senate  Doc.  645,  61  st  Cong.  2d  Sess. 

United  States.  Industrial  Commission.  Report.  19  vols.  1900-1902. 
Vols,  5,  7,  9,  12-17,  19  contain  evidence  &c  on  child  labor. 

Magazine  Articles 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25:  554-7-  ^h-  '05.  Child 
Labor  in  the  United  States  and  its  Great  Attendant  Evils. 
Felix  Adler. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25:  516-21.  My.  '05.  Work  of 
the  General  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs  against  Child 
Labor.  Mrs.  A.  O.  Granger. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25:  542-50.  My.  '05.  Child 
Labor  Legislation— a  Requisite  for  Industrial  Efficiency.  Jane 
Addams. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25:  554-7.  ^ly.  05.  Child 
Labor  from  the  Employer's  Point  of  View.  Emil  G.  Hirsch. 

*Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29 :  1-8.  Ja.  '07.  Poverty  and 
Parental  Dependence  as  an  Obstacle  to  Child  Labor  Reform. 
.  Homer  Folks. 

^♦Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:  19-25.  Ja.  '07.  Some  of 
the  Ultimate  Physical  Effects  of  Premature  Toil.  A.  H.  Frei- 
burg. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  32:  Sup.  19-30.  Jl.  '08.  Leader- 
ship  of  the  Child.  A.  J.  McKelway. 
V      Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  32:  Sup.  92-6.  Jl.  '08.  Ethical 
and  Religious  Aspects  of  Child  Labor.  J.  H.  Kirkland. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  32:  Sup.  108-12.  Jl.  '08.  Re- 
sponsibility of  the  Consumer.  Florence  Kelley. 

♦Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33:  Sup.  49-62.  Mr.  '09.  Un- 
settled Questions  about  Child  Labor.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 
V^  *Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33 :  Sup.  86-99.  Mr.  '09.  Prac- 
tical Restrictions  on  Child  Labor  in  Textile  Industries ;  High- 
er Educational  and  Physical  Qualifications.   Howell   Cheney. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33:  Sup.  100-3.  Mr.  '09. 
Scholarships  for  Working  Children.  Florence  Kelley. 

♦Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33:  Sup.  104-10.  Mr.  '09. 
Effects  of  Improper  Posture  in  Factory  Labor.  A.  H.  Frei- 
burg. 


xii  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33:  Sup.  11 1-5.  Mr.  '09.  Child 
\  Labor  and  the  Juvenile  Court.  J.  A.  Britton. 

■♦Annals  of  the  American   Academy.  33:    Sup.   122-30.   Mr.   '09. 
Handicaps   in   Later   Years    from    Child   Labor.   William    E. 
Harmon. 
^^  Annals   of   the   American   Academy,   33:    Sup.    131-43.    Mr.   '09. 
Accidents  to  Working  Children.  E.  W.  DeLeon. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  34:   Sup.  90-6.  Jl.   '09.   In- 
vasion of  Family  Life  by  Industry.  Florence  Kelley. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  35:  Sup.  23-32,  Mr.  '10.  In- 
difference   of    the    Church    to    Child    Labor    Reform.    J.    H. 
Holmes. 
Annals   of   the   American   Academy.    35:    Sup.   35-41.    Mt.    'id. 
Justice  to  the  Child.  S.  S.  Wise. 

Reprinted   by   the   National   Child   Labor  Committee. 
Annals    of    the    American    Academy.    35:    Sup.   61-72.    Mr.    '10. 
Federal  Children's  Bureau.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 
^/'^jK.nnals  of  the  American  Academy.  38:   Sup.   1-7.  Jl.  '11.  Child 
Labor  a  Menace  to  Civilization.  Felix  Adler. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  38:  Sup.  8-16.  Jl.  '11.  Con- 
servation of  Childhood.  Theodore  Roosevelt. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  38:  Sup.  77-89.  Jl.  '11.  Poverty 
and  Parental  Dependence  in  Relation  to  Child  Labor  Reform. 
Symposium, 
v^  Annals  of  the  American   Academy.  38:  Sup.  90-4.  Jl.  '11.    Ex- 
clusion of  Children  from  Dangerous  Trades.  W:  C.  Hanson. 
Charities.  11:  224-8.  S.  5,  '03.  After  School  Hours — What?  F.  S. 

Hall. 
Charities  and  the  Commons.  15:  434-5.  Ja.  6,  '06.  Human  View 

of  Child  Labor.  Graham  Taylor. 
Charities  and  the  Commons.  17:  591-8.  Ja.  5,  '07.  Holding  the 
Mirror  up  to  Industry;  the  Philadelphia  Industrial  Exhibit. 
Mabel  H.  B.  Mussey. 
Charities  and  the  Commons.  17:  639-49.  Ja.  5,  '07.  Child  Labor 

and  the  Republic.  S.  M.  Lindsay. 
Chautauquan.    10:   21-4.   O.  '89.   Child  Labor  and   Some  of   its 
Results.  Helen  Campbell. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xiii 

Chautauquan.  50:  416-24.  My.  '08.  Child  Labor  and  Vagrancy. 
Philip  Davis. 

♦Independent.  61 :  748-50.  S.  2"],  '06.  Child  Labor  and  Family 
Disintegration.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 

Journal  of  Political  Economy.  13:  245-57.  Mr.  '05.  Census  Statis- 
tics of  Child  Labor.  H.  L.  Bliss. 

Ladies'  Home  Journal.  23:  19.  Mr.  *o6.  Mr.  Roosevelt's  Views  on 
Factory  Laws  for  Women  and  Children. 

New  York  Evening  Post.  Jl.  18,  '07.  Plea  against  Child  Labor. 
E.  G.  Murphy. 

Outlook,  -^z'-  637-41.  Mr.  14,  '03.  Child  Labor  in  Factories.  Lillian 
W.  Betts. 

Outlook.  88:  94-6.  Ja.  11,  '08.  Burden-Bearers  of  Progress.  Lil- 
lian W.  Betts. 

Quarterly  Review.  205:  29-36.  Jl.  '06.  Cry  of  the  Children. 

Describes  British  conditions.     Same  article.     Eclectic  Magazine. 
147:   443-7.   N.   '06. 

Survey.  23:  9-1 1.  O.  2,  '09.  What  a  Boy  Can  Risk.  Owen  R. 
Lovejoy, 

Survey.  23:  21-35.  O.  2,  '09.  Our  Untrained  Citizens.  Florence 
Woolston. 

♦Westminster  Review.  172:  406-9.  O.  '09.  Half-Timers  in  the 
Factories.  Elizabeth  S.  Chesser. 

World's  Work.  11:  6991-5-  D-  *os.  Children  Who  Toil.  Robert 
Hunter. 

b.  Relation  of  Child  Labor  to  Education. 

♦Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25:  558-62.  My.  '05.  School 
as  a   Force   Arrayed   against   Child   Labor.   J.    H.    Kirkland. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:  104-9.  Ja.  '07.  Child 
Labor  and  the  Public  Schools.  S.  M.  Lindsay. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  32:  Sup.  80-91.  Jl.  '08.  Func- 
tion of  Education  in  Abolishing  Child  Labor.  Owen  R.  Love- 
joy. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  35 :  Sup.  33-4.  Mr.  *io.  In- 
adequate Schools.  E.  W.  Lord. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  38:  Sup.  53-9.  Jl.  '11.  Public 

School  and  the  Day's  Work.  Herman  Schneider. 
Charities  and  the  Commons.  16:  231-5.  My.  12,  '06.  From  School 
to  Work  in  Chicago.  Anna  E.  Nicholes. 


xiv  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Gunton's    Magazine.   24:   459-70.    My.   '03.    Educating   Southern 
Factory  Children.  Leonora  B.  Ellis. 

♦North  American  Review.  191:  773-84.  Je.  '10.  Will  Trade  Train- 
ing Solve  the  Child  Labor  Problem?  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 
Same  article  condensed.     Review  of  Reviews.   42:   95-6.   Jl.   '10. 

Survey.  22 :  650-5.  Ag.  7,  '09.  Plea  for  Vocational  Training.  Mary 
Flexner. 

Descriptive  References 

a.  Special  Trades  and  Industries 

Magazine  Articles 

Annals   of   the   American   Academy.   20:    167-77.   JI-   .'02.    Child 

Labor  in  the  Department  Store.  F.  N.  Brewer. 
*Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25:  437-58.  My.  '05.  Children 

in  American  Street  Trades.  M.  R  Adams. 
Annals   of  the  American   Academy.   27:   259-69.   Mr.   '06.   Child 
^N  Labor  in  Southern  Cotton  Mills.  A.  J.  McKelway. 

Annals  of  the   American   Academy.   27:   293-9.    Mr.   '06.   Child 

Labor  in  the   Coal   Mines.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  27:   300-11.   Mr.  '06.   Child 

Labor  in  the  Glass  Industry.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 
Annals   of   the   American    Academy.   29:    26-34.    Ja.   '07.    Child 

Labor  in  the  Soft  Coal  Mines.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:  35-49.  Ja.  '07.  Child  Labor 

in  the  Anthracite  Coal  Industry.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 
♦Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:  77-83.  Ja.  '07.  Children 

in  the  Glass  Works  of  Illinois.    Mrs.  Harriet  Van  der  Vaart. 
♦Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33:   Sup.   116-21.   Mr.  '09. 

Overworked  Children  on  the  Farm  and  in  the  School.  Woods 

Hutchinson. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  35 :  Sup.  137-44.  Mr.  '10.  Child 

Labor  in  Street  Trades.  E :  N.  Clopper. 
♦Annals   of  the   American   Academy.   35:    Sup.    145-9.    Mr.   '10. 

Child  Labor  in  Home  Industries.  Mary  Van  Kleeck. 
♦Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  35:  Sup.  152-4.  Mr.  '10.  Child 

Labor  in  Canneries.  Pauline  Goldmark. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  38:  Sup.  39-52.  Jl.  '11.  Cotton 

Mill:  the  Herod  among  Industries.  A.  J.  McKelway. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xv 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  38:  Sup.  60-76.  Jl.  '11.  Child 

Labor  on  the  Stage.  Symposium. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  38.  Sup.  95-110.  Jl.  '11.  Child 

Labor  in  Street  Trades  and  Public  Places.  Symposium. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  38:  Sup.  118-22.  Jl.  '11.  Child 

Labor  in  Gulf  Coast  Canneries.  L.  W.  Hine. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  38:  Sup.  123-31.  Jl.  '11.  Glass 

Industry  and  Child  Labor  Legislation.  C:  L.  Chute. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  38:  Sup.  133-8.  Jl.  '11.  Coal 

Mines  of  Pennsylvania.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 
Charities.  11:   15-9.  Jh  4.  '03.  Boy-destroying  Trade;  the  Glass 

Bottle  Industry  of  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  Indiana 

and    Illinois.    Florence    Kelley. 
Charities  and  the  Commons.  17:  555-8.  D.  29,  '06.  History  of  a 

Christmas  Box.  Scott  Nearing. 
♦Charities   and   the   Commons.    19:    1405-20.   Ja.    18,    '08.    Child 

Labor    in    New    York    City   Tenements.    Mary    Van    Kleeck. 
Cosmopolitan.  41 :  480-7.  S.  '06.  Hoe-Man  in  the  Making.  Edwin 

Markham. 
Cosmopolitan.  41 :   567-74.  O.  *o6.   Child-wrecking  in   the   Glass 

Factories.  Edwin  Markham. 
Cosmopolitan.  42:  20-8.  N.  '06.  Little  Slaves  of  the  Coal  Mines. 

Edwin  Markham. 
Cosmopolitan.  42:  327-33.  Ja.   '07.   Sweat-Shop   Inferno.   Edwin 

Markham. 
Cosmopolitan.  42 :  391-7.  F.  '07.  Smoke  of  Sacrifice ;  Child  Labor 

in  Tobacco  Manufacture.  Edwin  Markham. 
Cosmopolitan.  42:  667-73.  Ap.  '07.  Blight  on  the  Easter  Lilies; 

the  Cruel  Demand  for  Child  Labor.  Edwin  Markham. 
Cosmopolitan.  43:  310-4.  Jl.  '07.   Spinners  in  the  Dark;   Child 

Labor  in  the  Silk  Mills.  Edwin  Markham. 
♦McClure.  20:  435-44.  F.  '03.  Children  of  the  Coal  Shadow.  F. 

H.  Nichols. 

Same  article  condensed.    Review  of  Reviews.    27:   214-5.  F.   '03. 
North   American   Review.    189:    573-84-    Ap.   '09.    Children    and 

Textiles.  Florence  N.  Sanville. 
Outlook.    73:    921-7.    Ap,    18,    '03.    Child    Labor   in    Shops    and 

Homes.  Lillian  W.  Betts. 


xvi  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Outlook.  79:  177-9.  Ja.  21,  '05.  Children  in  the  Canning  Industry. 
E.  S.  Whitin. 

Outlook.  80:  1011-9.  Ag.  26,  '05.  Schoolhouse  or  Coal-Breaker! 
Owen  R.  Love  joy. 

Survey.  24:  31 1-7.  My.  21,  '10.  Child  Labor  and  the  Night  Mes- 
senger Service.  Owen  R.  Love  joy. 

b.  Special  Sections  of  the  United  States  and  Other  Countries. 

Books,  Pamphlets  and  Documents 

American  Economic  Association  Quarterly.  Third  Series.  11 : 
387-615.  O.  '10.  Child  Labor  Policy  of  New  Jersey.  A.  S. 
Field". 

National  Child  Labor  Committee.  Child  Labor  in  Georgia.  A.  J. 
McKelway.  Pamphlet  138. 

National  Child  Labor  Committee.  Child  Labor  in  Rural  Ken- 
tucky. E.  N.  Clopper.   Pamphlet   120. 

United  States.  Labor,  Bureau  of.  Bulletin.  9:  485-637.  My.  '04. 
Child  Labor  in  the  United  States.  Hannah  R.  Sewall. 

United  States.  Labor,  Bureau  of.  Bulletin.  18:  1-85.  Ja.  '09. 
Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners  in  Great  Britain.  V.  S. 
Clark. 

Magazine  Articles 

American  Journal  of  Sociology.  8:  623-30.  Mr.  '03.  Study  of 
Southern  Cotton  Mill  Communities.    Leonora  B.  Ellis. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25:  430-6.  My.  '05.  Child 
Labor  in  Southern  Industry.  A.  J.  McKelway. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  32:  Sup.  72-9.  Jl.  '08.  Educa- 
tion of  Mill  Children  in  the  South.  A.  E.  Seddon. 

♦Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33 :  Sup.  73-8.  Mr.  '09.  Child 
Labor  in  the  Textile  Industries  and  Canneries  of  New  Eng- 
land. E.  W.  Lord. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33 :  Sup.  79-85.  Mr.  '09.  Child 
Labor  in  the  Ohio  Valley  States.  E.  N.  Clopper. 

♦Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  Z2'-  278-86.  Mr.  '09.  Condi- 
tion of  Labor  in  Southern  Cotton  Mills.  Lewis  W.  Parker. 

Arena.  37:  613-9.  Je.  '07.  Child-Labor;  a  Rational  Statement.  E. 
E.  Pratt. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xvii 

Charities  and  the  Commons.  17 :  271-3.  N.  10,  '06.  Welfare  Work 
and  Child  Labor  in  Southern  Cotton  Mills.  A.  J.  McKelway. 

Charities  and  the  Commons.  21:  743-57.  Ja.  30,  '09.  Child  Labor 
in  the  Carolinas.  A   J.  McKelway. 
Reprinted   by   the  National    Child   Labor   Committee, 

Era  Magazine.  12:  49-57.  Jl.  '03.  Factory  Children  of  Georgia. 
Leonora  B.  Ellis. 

McClure.  20:  661-6.  Ap.  '03.  Who  Was  Her  Keeper?  Story. 
Mary  A.  Bacon. 

North  American  Review.  186:  245-56.  O.  '07.  Child-Labor  Prob- 
lem; Fact  versus  Sentimentality.  Julia  Magruder. 

North  American  Review.  189:  890-9.  Je.  '09.  Plea  of  the  Child 
Laborer.  A.  H.  Ulm. 

Outlook.  74:  124-7.  My.  9,  '03.  Child  Labor  in  Pennsylvania. 
Kellogg  Durland. 

♦Outlook.  78:  982-5.  D.  17,  '04.  Child  Labor  in  Eastern  Penn- 
sylvania. Peter  Roberts. 

Legislation 

Books,  Pamphlets  and  Documents 

American  Association  for  Labor  Legislation.  Legislative  Review. 
No.    5.    Child    Labor,    Summaries    of    Laws    in    Force,    1910. 
Laura  Scott. 
Address  the  Association  at  Metropolitan  Tower,  New  York  for 

its    publications. 

American  Association  for  Labor  Legislation.  Legislative  Review. 
No.  6.  Review  of  Labor  Legislation  of  1910.  Irene  O.  An- 
drews. 

Barnard,  J,  Lynn.  Factory  Legislation  in  Pennsylvania.  Chap. 
VII.  Child  Labor  Campaign,  1903-1905.  Chap.  X  and  XL  Child 
Labor  Code.  pp.  138-9.  Vacation  Permits.  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania. Publications.  Series  in  Political  Economy  and  Pub- 
lic Law.  No.  19.  1907. 

Beveridge,  Albert  J.  Employment  of  Child  Labor;  Speech  in  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States,  January  23,  28  and  29,  1907.  170P. 

United  States.  Labor,  Bureau  of.  Bulletin.  12:  197-285.  Ja.  '06. 
Laws  Relating  to  the  Employment  of  Children  in  the  United 
States  in  Force,  December,  1905. 


xviii  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

United  States.  Labor,  Bureau  of.  Bulletin.   15:  685-816.   N.  '07. 

Laws  Relating  to  the  Employment  of  Women  and  Children. 
United  States.  Labor,  Bureau  of.  Bulletin.  21:  1-413.  Jl.  '10.  Child 

Labor  Legislation  in  Europe.  C.  W.  A.  Veditz. 
Magazine   Articles 
American  Journal  of  Sociology.  3:  490-501.  Ja.  '98.  Illinois  Child 

Labor  Law.  Florence  Kelley. 
♦American  Journal  of  Sociolog}-.  10:  299-314.  X.  '04.  Has  Illinois 

the  Best  Laws  in  the  Country  for  the  Protection  of  Children? 

Florence  Kelley. 
♦Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25:  459-66.  My.  '05.  Test  of 

Effective  Child-Labor  Legislation.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 
Annals  of  the  American   Academy.  25:  467-79.   My.    '05.   Child 

Labor  Legislation  and  Methods  of  Enforcement  in  Northern 

Central  States.  Hal  ford  Erickson. 
Annals  of  the   American   Academy.  25:   480-90.    My.   '05.   Child 

Labor    Legislation    in    the    New    England    States.    Florence 

Kelley. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25 :  491-507.  My.  '05.  Child 

Labor  Legislation  in  the  South."  N.  L.  Anderson. 
Annals   of  the   American  Academy.  25:   508-15.    My.   '05.   Child 

Labor  Legislation  and  Methods  of  Enforcement  in  the  West- 
ern States.  B.  B.  Lindsey. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25:  522-41.   My.  '05.  Opera- 
tion of  the  New  Child  Labor  Law  in  New  Jersey.  Hugh  H. 

Fox. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  27:  331-6.  Mr.  '06.  Child  Labor 

a  National  Problem.  S.  M.  Lindsay. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  27:  364-70.  Mr.  '06.  Essentials 

of  a  Child  Labor  Law  for  the  District  of  Columbia.   H.  J. 

Harris. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:  50-6.  Ja.  '07.  Obstacles  to 

the  Enforcement  of  Child  Labor  Legislation.  Florence  Kelley. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:   57-60.  Ja.  '07.  National 

Protection  for  Children.  Jane  Addams. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:  61-70.  Ja.  '07.  Child  Labor 

Laws  of  the  Ohio  Valley.  J.  H.  Morgan. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:  93-103.  Ja.  '07.  Enforce- 
ment of    Child   Labor  Legislation    in    Illinois.    E.   T.   Davies. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  xix 

♦Annals   of  the  American   Academy.  29:    115-24.   Ja.    07.   Child 

Labor  and  the  Nation.  A.  J.  Beveridge. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:   135-41.  Ja.  '07.  Attitude 

of    Society   toward   the    Child   as    an    Index    of    Civilization. 

Felix  Adler. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:  Sup.  1-64.  Ja.  '07.  31 :  Sup. 

1-68.  My.  '08.  Child  Labor  Handbook  of  the  National  Con- 
sumers' League. 

Classified  comparison  of  legislation  in  the  various  states. 
*Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  31:  Sup.  44-6.  Ja.  '07;  Sup. 

56-8.  My.  '08.  What  Constitutes  Effective  Child  Labor  Laws? 
♦Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  31:  Sup.  47-8.  Ja.  '07.  Sup. 

59-62.  My.  '08.  Standard  Child  Labor  Law. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  32:  Sup.  31-9.  Jl.  '08.  Child 

Labor  in  New  England.  E.  W.  Lord. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33:  287-300.  Mr.  '09.  Recent 

Massachusetts  Labor  Legislation.  F.  S.  Baldwin. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33:  Sup.  63-72.  Mr.  '09.  Child 

and  the  Law.  A.  J.  McKelway. 

Report   on   child  labor  legislation  in   the   South. 
Annals   of   the   American   Academy.   33:    Sup.    153-61.    Mr.   '09. 

Present  Situation  in  Illinois,  E.  T.  Davies. 
Annals   of   the   American    Academy.    33:    Sup.    212-4.    Mr.    '09. 

Exemptions  to  Child  Labor  Laws.  E.  W.  Frost. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  35:  Sup.  7-12.  Mr.  '10.  Child 

Labor  Legislation  in  Massachusetts.  Curtis  Guild,  jr. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  35:  Sup.  91-5.  Mr.  '10.  En- 
forcement of  Child  Labor  Laws.  Homer  Folks. 
Annals   of   the   American   Academy.   35:    Sup,   96-102.    Mr.    '10, 

Enforcement  of  Child  Labor  Laws  in  South  Carolina,  E.  J. 

Watson. 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  35:  Sup.  103-10.  Mr.  '10.  En- 
forcement of  Child  Labor  Laws  in  New  Hampshire.  H.  C. 

Morrison. 
Annals   of   the    American   Academy.   35:    Sup.    127-9.    Mr.    '10. 

Proof-of-Age  Records.  Jeanie  V.  Minor. 
Annals   of   the   American   Academy,  35:    Sup.   239-74.    Mr.   '10, 

Eight-Hour  Day  and  Prohibition  of  Night  Work;  Report  of 

a   Public   Hearing  before  the  Committee  on  Labor,  General 

Court  of  Massachusetts,  February,  1910. 


XX  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Annals  of  the  American  A<:aclemy.  38:  Sup.  17-23'.  Jl.  '11.  Stand- 
ards proposed  by  the  United  States  Commission  on  Uniform 
Laws.  A.  L.  Stovall. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  38:  Sup.  24-30.  Jl.  '11.  What 
Should  We  Sacrifice  to  Uniformity?  Florence  Kelley. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  38:  Sup.  31-8.  Jl.  '11.  Seven 
Years  of  Child  Labor  Reform.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 

Charities.  12:  60-2.  Ja.  9,  '04.  Child  Labor  in  New  Jersey. 

Charities.  12:  343-6.  Ap.  2,  '04.  Foster-Children  and  the  Shop; 
Placing-out  Standards  and  Child-Labor  Laws  in  DiflFerent 
States.  Florence  D.  Dale. 

Charities.  13:  19-25.  O.  i,  '04.  Child  Labor  and  the  Law,  Homer 
Folks. 

Charities.  13:  525-31.  Mr.  4,  '05.  Child  Labor  Campaign.  S.  M. 
Lindsay. 

Charities.  14:  1024-6.  Ag.  26,  '05.  Enforcement  of  Child  Labor 
Legislation.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 

Charities  and  the  Commons.  21:  480-1.  D.  26,  '08.  New  Louis- 
iana Child  Labor  Law.  Jean  M.  Gordon. 

Chautauquan.  46:  217-25.  Ap,  '07.  Child  Labor  Legislation  in 
England.   Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 

Elementary  School  Teacher,  9:  51 1-6.  Je.  '09.  Child-Labor  Leg- 
islation. S.  P.  Breckinridge. 

Outlook.  85:  360-4.  F.  16,  '07.  Evil  of  Child  Labor.  A.  J.  Mc- 
Kelway. 

Outlook.  90:  564-5.  N.  14,  '08.  Recent  Child  Labor  Legislation  in 
Canada. 

Review  of  Reviews.  42:  593-6.  N.  '10.  Six  Years'  Battle  for  the 
Working  Child,  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 

Survey.  22:  321-4.  My.  29,  '09,  Pennsylvania's  Child  Labor  Laws. 
F.  S,  Hall. 

Survey.  23:  981-2,  Mr,  26,  '10,  Ohio's  Child  Labor  Relief  Law. 
E.  N.  Clopper. 

Survey.  24:  570-2,  Jl,  2,  '10,  Year's  Progress  in  Child  Labor 
Legislation.  Owen  R,  Lovejoy, 

World  To-Day,  12:  427-30,  Ap.  '07.  Fight  to  Save  the  Children. 
A.  J.  McKelway. 


SELECTED  ARTICLES  ON 
CHILD  LABOR 


INTRODUCTION 

Our  -Pilgrim  forefathers  brought  the  child  labor  problem  with 
them  in  the  Mayflower.  Combined  with  an  earnest  belief  that 
idleness  imperiled  the  souls,  even  of  children,  were  the  stern 
necessities  of  life  in  a  rigorous  wilderness.  Paupers,  even  though 
of  tender  years,  were  by  no  means  to  become  public  charges  if 
by  incessant  industry  they  could  be  made  to  earn  enough  to  keep 
themselves  in  food  and  shelter.  Literature  has  pictured  the 
bound  girl  and  boy  for  us.  In  those  days  the  lot  of  all  children 
was  to  work,  and  the  primitive  home  afforded  ample  scope  for 
the  activities  of  many  little  toilers.  It  was  a  matter  of  moral 
significance  as  well  as  industrial  economy  to  keep  all  hands  oc- 
cupied, so  that  women  and  children  were  forced  into  the  early 
factories  wherever  home  work  failed  to  be  sufficient  to  occupy 
them.  With  the  invention  of  machinery  for  factories,  more 
women  and  children  have  been  called  to  the  slaughter  as  thfe 
domestic  arts  were  supplanted  by  factory  products. 

The  idea  of  the  moral  necessity  of  incessant  toil  for  little 
hands  vanished  along  with  many  worthier  ideals  of  our  Pilgrim 
fathers.  In  place  of  it  we  have  industrial  greed  calling  for 
constant  sacrifice  of  little  bodies  and  growing  minds.  When 
society  woke  to  a  realization  of  this  sacrifice  and  its  social  signif- 
icance, child  labor  laws  were  formulated.  Most  of  these  are 
aimed  at  factories.  In  many,  large  cities  the  result  has  been  to 
better  conditions  as  to  age  limit  for  employment  as  well  as  hours 
of  labor  and  nature  of  employment  for  children.  Sanitary  and 
moral  conditions  of  factories  employing  children  have  also  been 
subjects  of  legislation. 

Hand-in-hand  with  factory  legislation  came  compulsory  school 
laws — forward  movements  in  the  protection  of  society  through 
its  most  important  asset.     One  obstacle  to  success  has  been  the 


V 


2  SELECTED    ARTICLES  _ 

growing  difficulty,  with  the  influx  of  low  grade  immigration,  of 
enforcing  these  laws.  The  most  thoroughgoing  feature  of  such 
enforcement  seems  to  be  found  in  laws  that  fix  a  penalty  on 
adult  responsibility,  whether  that  of  the  parent,  employer,  or 
other  contributive  agencies. 

Laws  have  almost  entirely  failed  to  reach  home  industries. 
Tired  little  children  stumble  home  from  school  to  be  driven  to 
an  infinite  variety  of  work  too  monotonous  and  too  delicate  for 
little  hands,  in  unsanitary  tenements  and  in  surroundings  that 
make  for  inefficient  and  vicious  citizenship. 

Compulsory  education  laws  are  difficult  of  enforcement  in 
rural  districts,  and  the  farm  child  is  often  overworked  and 
under  educated.  Most  child  labor  laws  do  not  reach  the  farm 
child  at  all.  Because  of  better  food  and  air  and  sunshine,  even 
though  overworked,  he  has  a  better  chance  than  the  tenement 
child  to  arrive  at  physical  maturity  with  a  well  developed  body 
and  a  reasonably  active  and  morally  responsive  mind;  but  law 
does  not  afford  the  farm  child  sufficient  protection. 

It  is  plain  that  the  tenement  and  the  farm  home  must  be 
divested  of  their  traditional  impregnability,  and  the  child  be 
treated  as  a  potential  citizen  in  spite  of  the  time  honored  custom 
of  regarding  children  as  belonging  exclusively  to  their ,  parents. 

Some  states  in  their  zeal  for  protecting  children  from  their 
parents  and  from  industrial  greed,  have  made  it  nearly  impossible 
for  children  under  fourteen  years  of^ge  to  engage  in  any  gain- 
\/^  ful  occupation  whatever,  thus  condemning  them,  out  of  school 
hours,  to  idleness  and  the  streets.  No  adequate  solution  of  the 
problem  of  child  management  out  of  school  hours  has  been  ar- 
rived at. 

Quite  as  problematic  is  the  right  development  of  public  edu- 
cation. It  is  coming  to  be  generally  believed  that  education  for 
efficient  life  involves  what  amounts  to^  a  revolution  in  public 
education.  Industrial  education  is  believed  by  many  to  be  a 
partial  solution  of  the  child  labor  problem. 

The  discussion  of  these  problems  will  gcf  on  until  nowhere 
»  within  our  borders  either  ignorance  or  greed  may  rob  childhood 
"^  of  its  birthright  or  society  of  an  enlightened  and  efficient  citizen- 
ship. 


SELECTED  ARTICLES 

American  Journal   of    Sociology.    14:    15-37.   July,    1908. 
Early  History  of  Child   Labor  in  America.     Edith  Abbott. 

The  introduction  of  children  into  our  early  factories  was  a 
natural  consequence  of  the  colonial  attitude  toward  child  labor, 
of  the  provisions  of  the  early  poor  laws  and  of  philanthropic 
efforts  to  prevent  children  from  becoming  a  public  charge, 
and,  above  all,  of  the  Puritan  belief  in  the  virtue  of  industry 
and  the  sin  of  idleness.  Industry  by  compulsion,  if  not  by 
faith,  was  the  gospel  preached  to  the  young  as  well  as  to  the 
old,  and  quite  frequently  to  the  children  of  the  rich  as  well 
as  the  poor. 

Thus  we  find  Higginson  rejoicing  over  the  "New  England 
Plantation"  because  "little  children  here  by  setting  of  corn 
may  earne  much  more  than  their  owne  maintenance;"  and  less 
than  a  decade  later  Johnson  was  commending  the  industrious 
people  of  Rowley  who  "built  a  fulling  mill  and  caused  their 
little  ones  to  be  very  diligent  in  spinning  cotton  wool." 

This  rigorous  insistence  on  industry  was,  with  the  New 
England  colonists,  not  only  a  matter  of  conscience  but  of 
necessity.  For  they  had  seen  "the  grime  and  grisly  face  of 
povertie  coming  upon  them,"  and  Bradford  points  out  with 
Puritan  simplicity  that  "as  necessitie  was  a  stern  task-master 
over  them  [the  Puritans],  so  they  were  forced  to  be  such, 
not  only  to  their  servants  but  in  a  sorte  to  their  dearest  chil- 
dren: the  which  as  it  did  not  a  little  wound  ye  tender  hearts 
of  many  a  loving  father  and  mother,  so  it  produced  likewise 
sundrie  sad  and  sorrowful  effects.  For  many  of  their  children 
....  haveing  lernde  to  bear  ye  yoake  in  their  youth,  and  wil- 
ling to  bear  parte  of  their  parents'  burden,  were,  oftentimes,  so 


4  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

oppressed  with  their  hevie  labours  that  though  their  minds 
were  free  and  willing,  yet  their  bodies  bowed  under  ye 
weight  of  ye  same  and  became  decreped  in  their  early  youth." 

Throughout  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  the 
Court  Records  and  Province  Laws  give  evidence  of  the 
serious  attempt  made  to  prevent  idleness  among  children. 
In  1640,  an  order  of  the  Great  and  General  Court  of  Massa- 
chusetts required  the  magistrates  of  the  several  towns  to  see 
"what  couse  may  be  taken  for  teaching  the  boys  and  girles 
in  all  towns  the  spinning  of  the  yarne."  And  in  1641,  "it 
is  desired  and  will  be  expected  that  all  masters  of  families 
should  see  that  their  children  and  servants  should  be  industri- 
ously implied  so  as  the  mornings  and  evenings  and  other 
seasons  may  not  bee  lost  as  formerly  they  have  bene." 

In  the  following  year  more  definite  orders  are  given.  For 
a  child  to  "keep  cattle"  alone  is  not  to  be  industrious  in  the 
Puritan  sense,  and  it  is  decreed  that  such  children  as  have 
this  for  their  occupation  shall  also  "bee  set  to  some  other  im- 
pliment  withall  as  spinning  upon  the  rock,  knitting,  weveing 
tape,  etc."  In  1656  a  consideration  of  the  advisability  of  pro- 
moting the  manufacture  of  cloth  leads  to  the  order  that 
"all  hands  not  necessarily  imployed  on  other  occasions,  as 
woemen,  girles,  and  boys,  shall  and  hereby  are  enjoyned  to 
spin  according  to  their  skill  and  abilitee  and  that  the  select- 
men in  every  towne  doe  consider  the  condition  and  capacitie 
of  every  family  and  accordingly  assess  them  as  one  or  more 
spinners." 

The  belief  in  the  necessity  and  propriety  of  keeping  little 
children  at  work  may  also  be  read  in  the  early  poor  law 
provisions.  In    dealing   with    dependent    children,    as    in   so 

many  other  methods  of  providing  for  the  poor,  the  colonies 
were  much  influenced  by  the  practice  of  the  mother  country. 
In  England,  the  Elizabethan  poor  law  had  provided  for  the 
apprenticing  of  the  pauper  child,  and  in  the  eighteenth,  and 
even  in  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  "philan- 
thropic device  of  employing  cheap  child  labor"  was  much  ap- 
proved. Spinning  schools  were  established  and  houses  of  indus- 
try founded  in  order  to  provide  for  the  employment  of  children. 


CHILD   LABOR  5 

Much  the  same  policy  was  followed  in  the  colonies  with 
regard  to  the  children  of  the  poor.  In  Plymouth,  in  1641, 
it  was  ordered  "that  those  that  have  reliefe  from  the  townes 
and  have  children  and  doe  not  ymploy  them  that  then  it  shal 
be  lawfuU  for  the  Towneship  to  take  order  that  those  children 
shal  be  put  to  worke  in  fitting  ymployment  according  to  their 
strength  and  abilities  or  placed  out  by  the  Townes."  The 
Town  of  Boston  in  1672  notifies  a  list  of  persons  to  "dispose 
of  their  severall  children  ....  abroad  for  servants,  to  serve 
by  Indentures  accordinge  to  their  ages  and  capacities,"  and 
if  they  neglect  this  "the  selectmen  will  take  their  said  chil- 
dren from  them  and  place  them  with  such  masters  as  they 
shall  provide  accordinge  as  the  law  directs."  The  children 
are  both  girls  and  boys,  from  eight  years  old  up.  In  1682  the 
rebuilding  of  an  almshouse  and  workhouse  in  Boston  was 
recommended  in  order  that  children  who  "shamefully  spend 
their  time  in  the  streets"  and  other  idlers  might  be  put  to 
work  "at  ye  charge  of  ye  Town." 

It  is  not  to  be  assumed  that  the  work  of  these  ap- 
prenticed children  was  as  great  an  evil  as  child  labor  in  a 
modern  factory.  In  many  cases  they  were  employed  in  the 
open  air  and  their  tasks  were  only  properly  disciplinary.  The 
point  which  is  to  be  emphasized  is  that  child  labor  was  be- 
lieved in  as  a  righteous  institution,  and  when  the  transition 
to  the  factory  system  was  made  it  was  almost  inevitable  that 
this  attitude  toward  children's  work  should  be  carried  over 
without  any  question  as  to  whether  circumstances  might  not 
have  changed. 

Virginia  also  looked  after  the  employment  of  the  children 
of  the  poor.  In  1646  two  houses  were  erected  in  Jamestown 
for  manufacturing  linen.  The  diflferent  counties  were  respect- 
ively requested  to  send  two  poor  boys  or  girls  at  least  seven 
or  eight  years  old  "to  be  instructed  in  the  art  of  carding, 
knitting  and  spinning." 

The  Virginia  emphasis  on  the  commercial  side  of  child 
labor  became  pretty  general  in  the  other  colonies  in  the 
eighteenth   century,    particularly    in    the   latter   half  of    it   when 


\ 


6  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

attention  began  to  be  directed  to  the  importance  of  develop- 
ing domestic  manufactures;  and  we  find  that  the  policy  of 
keeping  children  at  work  becomes  less  and  less  a  question 
of  moral  principle,  even  in  New  England.  It  is  not  so  much 
the  virtue  of  industry  about  which  men  are  concerned  but  the 
fact  that  child  labor  is  a  national  asset  which  may  be  used 
to  further  the  material  greatness  of  America. 
"  In  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  more  persist- 
ent efforts  began  to  be  made  to  further  the  cloth-making 
industry,  and  there  is  much  interest  in  the  possibility  of  mak- 
ing children  useful  to  this  end.  Two  Boston  newspapers 
m  1750  announce  that  it  is  proposed  "to  open  several  spin- 
ning schools  in  this  Town  where  children  may  be  taught 
gratis."  In  the  following  year  the  "Society  for  Encouraging 
Industry  and  Employing  the  Poor"  was  organized  with  the 
double  purpose  of  promoting  the .  manufacture  of  woolen  and 
other  cloth,  and  of  employing  "our  own  women  and  children 
who  are  now  in  a  great  measure  idle." 

Domestic  industries  became  increasingly  important  dur- 
ing this  period,  and  children  were  not  only  employed  in  the 
various  processes  of  manufacture  carried  on  in  the  house- 
hold but  it  was  considered  a  subject  for  public  congratulation 
that  they  could  be  so  employed.  The  report  of  the  governor 
of  New  York  declares  that  in  his  province  "every  home 
swarms  with  children,  who  are  set  to  spin  and  card."  In 
1789  the  New  York  Linen  "Manufactory"  advertises  that  "the 
Directors  are  disposed  to  take  young  boys  as  apprentices  to 
the  linen  and  cotton  branches"  and  notifies,  parents  to  make 
application  for  their  children.  In  the  same  year  President 
Washington  finds  a  sail  duck  "manufactory"  in  Boston  where 
there  are  fourteen  girls  "spinning  with  both  hands,  the  flax 
being  fastened  to  the  waist,"  and  with  children  (girls)  to 
turn  the  wheels  foi  them;  that  children  should  be  employed 
at  work  of  this  kind  seems  to  have  been  regarded  with- 
out any  misgivings,  both  in  Boston  and  at  Haverhill,  where 
h^  thinks  the  system  more  "ingenious." 

With  the  introduction  of  machinery  and  the  opening  up 
of  new  and  great  possibilities  for  manufacturing  industries,  the 


CHILD    LAHOR  7 

employment    of    children    hecanie^  more    and    more    grofitabje  ] 
and    we    find    that    their    labor    is    always    counted    on    as    a 
valuable  resource,  with  which  to  meet  the  deficiency  and  high 
cost    of    male    labor    in    this    country.      In    the    first    mills    in 
which  machinery  was  used,  children's  labor  was  depended  on.  ' 
In  1789  a  petition  in  behalf  of  the  "first  cotton  factory,"  that\ 
of  Beverly.   Massachusetts,  states  that  "it  will   afford   employ-  ! 
ment    to    a   great    number   of   women    and    children,    many    of  j 
whom  will  be  otherwise  useless,  if  not  burdensome  to  society."  1 
In    Rhode    Island,    Samuel    Slater,    the    "father    of    American  I 
Manufactures,"     employed     only     children     in     his     first    small 
establishment.     Smith  Wilkinson's  account  of  this  mill,  which 
was  published  many  years  later,  describes  all  of  the  operatives 
as    being    between    seven    and    twelve    years    of    age,      "I    was 
then,"  he  says,  "in  my  tenth  year  and  went  to  work  for  him 
tending  the  breaker." 

When  the  new  government  began  to  consider  seriously  \ 
the  possible  means  of  developing  our  "infant  industries,"  we 
I'liul  Hamilton  calling  attention  in  his  "Report  on  Manu- 
factures" to  the  fact  that  "children  are  rendered  more  useful 
by  manufacturing  establishments  than  they  otherwise  would 
be,"  and  Trench  Coxe  argues  that  women  and  children  widi 
the  newly  discovered  power  machinery  will  do  the  work  and 
meet  the  demand  for  factory  labor.  It  was  indeed  one  of 
the  arguments  with  which  the  early  protectionists  most  fre- 
quently met  their  opponents  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  last 
century.  The  objection  that  American  labor  was  most  profit- 
ably employed  in  agriculture  and  that  to  "abstract"  this  labor  . 
from  the  soil  would  be  unwise  and  unprofitable  was  answered/, 
by  pointing  to  the  children.  In  the  pages  of  Niles'  Register 
this  is  done  again  and  again.  The  work  of  manufactures 
does  not  demand  able-bodied  men,  it  is  claimed,  but  "is  now 
better  done  by  little  girls  from  six  to  twelye  years  old," 

One  hoary  old  protectionist  in  the  pages  of  the  same 
journal  carefully  works  out  the  exact  gain  that  comes  to  a 
typical  village  from  the  employing  of  its  children  in  textile 
factories.  He  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  "if  we  Suppose 
that   before    the    establishment    of   these    manufactories,    there 


I 


8  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

were  two  hundred  children  between  seven  and  sixteen  years 
of  age,  that  contributed  nothing  towards  their  maintenance 
and  that  they  are  now  employed,  it  makes  an  immediate  dif- 
ference of  $13,500  a  year  to  the  value  produced  in  the  town!" 

Philanthropists  like  Matthew  Carey  follow  in  the  wake 
of  colonial  traditions  which  made  industry  a  fetich,  and  are 
warm  with  their  praise  of  manufactures  because  of  the  larger 
field  of  employment  furnished  for  children.  They  point  to 
the  additional  value  that  can  be  got  from  girls  between  the 
ages  of  ten  and  sixteen,  (604,912  bein^  their  estimated  num- 
ber) "most  of  whom  are  too  young  or  too  delicate  for  agricul- 
ture," and  in  contrast  call  attention  -to  the  "vice  and'  immorali- 
ty to  which  children  are  exposed  by  a  career  of  idleness.'  Indeed 
the  approval  of  child  labor  is  met  with  on  all  sides.  Com- 
mendation was  solicited  for  Baxter's  machines  on  the  ground 
that  they  could  be  turned,  one  sort  by  children  from  five  to 
ten  years  and  the  other  by  girls  from  ten  to  twenty  years. 
Governor  Davis  of  Massachusetts  calls  attention  in  one  of 
his  messages  to  the  fact  that  not  only  the  machines  in  the 
textile  manufacure  but  '"thousands  of  others  equally  impor- 
tant, are  managed  and  worked  easily  by  females  and  children." 

Moreover  the  employment  of  children  varied  not  only 
from  state  to  state  but  from  district  to  district.  Child  la- 
bor was  much  less  extensive  in  Massachusetts  than  in  Rhode 
Island.  Samuel  Slater  had  established  in  Providence  and 
its  vicinity  the  plan  of  employing  families  in  his  mills — a 
transplanting  of  the  system  with  which  he  had  been  familiar 
in  England.  The  factory  village  of  the  Rhode  Island  type, 
therefore,  was  composed  of  families  entirely  dependent  upon 
their  labor  in  the  mills,  and  the  mill  children  lived  at  home 
with  their  parents.  On  the  other  hand,  in  towns  like  Lowell  and 
Waltham  in  Massachusetts,  the  operatives  were  almost  entire- 
ly farmers'  daughters,  who,  being  away  from  their  own  homes, 
were  cared  for  in  corporation  boarding-houses.  The  result 
'was.  that  since  the  cost  of  their  board  was  more  than  a  child 
could  earn,  the  employment  of  children  was  not  profitable. 
.  Kirk  Boott's  estimate  for  Lowell  in  1827  was  that,  in  six  mills 
employing    1,200   persons,    nine-tenths    of   the    operatives    were 


CHILD   LABOR  9 

females  and  only  twenty  were  from  twelve  to  fourteen  years 
of  age.  But  that  children  were  often  employed  very  young, 
even  in  so-called  model  places  like  Waltham  and  Lowell,  can- 
not be  questioned.  Mrs.  Robinson,  who  gives  us  a  delightful  if 
somewhat  optimistic  account  of  the  early  mill  girls,  was  only 
ten  years  old  when  she  went  to  work  in  the  Tremont  Mills, 
and  Lucy  Larcom  was  only  eleven  when  she  became  a  little 
dofifer  on   the    Lawrence   Corporation. 

Looked  at  through  an  historical  perspective  our  modern 
child-labor  problem  seems  to  have  been  inherited  from  the  indus- 
trial and  social  life  of  the  colonies,  as  well  as  from  the  industrial 
revolution  and  the  establishment  of  the  factory  system.  /The 
having  "all  hands  employed"  was  a  part  of  the  Puritan  idea  of 
virtue,  and  although  the  employment  of  children  tended  to 
become  more  and  more  for  commercial  purposes  rather  than  for 
moral  righteousness,  the  old  moral  arguments  were  used  and 
are  still  used  to  support  the  commercialized  system.  It  is  clear 
and  unmistakable  that  the  colonial  policy  of  promoting  thrift 
and  industry  was  skillfully  used  in  the  early  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  by  the  "friends  of  industry"  who  saw  in  child 
labor  a  useful  instrument  for  the  developing  of  our  national 
resources.  Such  documents  as  Samuel  Slater's  time  list  for  his 
first  group  of  operatives,  all  children,  the  memorandum  of  the 
hiring  out  of  Dennis  Rier  and  his  family  of  little  children  from 
Newburyport,  or  Lucy  Larcom's  "Strange  Story  of  a  Little 
Child  Earning  Its  Living"  all  point  to  a  general  acceptance 
of  the  propriety  of  children's  labor  in  the  early  days  of  the 
factory  system.  That  so  little  interest  was  taken  in  the. subject 
until  the  last  two  decades  is  due,  perhaps,  to  the  fact  that  our 
social  reform  movement  belongs  to  recent,  if  not  contemporary, 
history.  A  consciousness  of  our  social  sins  today  does  not  mean 
that  they  are  of  sudden  growth,  but  rather  that  public  opinion  has 
slowly  become  enlightened  enough  to  take  cognizance  of  them. 

Arena.  28:  370-8.  October,  1902. 

Movement  to  restrict  Child  Labor.   Leonora   Beck  Ellis. 
The    slavery   of    little    children    in    the   cotton    mills    of   the 
South  is  a  deplorable  evil,  but,  unhappily,  not  a  new  crime  even 


lo  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

against  modern  civilization.  Certain  mistakes  and  sins  peculiar 
to  industrial  development  seem  to  repeat  themselves  no  less 
persistently  than  those  of  political  history. 

Precisely  one  hundred  and  six  years  ago,  there  was  pub- 
lished by  Dr.  Aikin  of  England  a  little  work  descriptive  of  the 
country  and  the  people  around  Manchester,  a  town  that  even  in 
1795  had  grown  to  be  the  manufacturing  center  of  Great 
Britain.  Page  after  page  of  this  brief  but  valuable  contribu- 
tion to  earlier  economic  literature  reads  as  if  written  concern- 
ing the  Lowell  or  Fall  River  operatives  of  a  generation  back, 
or  concerning  those  who  this  very  day  are  plying  spindle  and 
loom  in  Augusta,  Ga.,  Charlotte,  N.  C,  Columbia,  S.  C,  and 
Huntsville,  Ala. 

After  pointing  cut  that  the  sudden  invention,  within  his  own 
day,  of  machines  for  the  abridgment  of  labor  had  already 
exerted  a  most  surprising  influence  in  extending  British  trade, 
as  well  as  calling  in  hands  from  all  parts,  "particularly,"  he 
adds,  "children  for  the  cotton  mills,"  Dr.  Aikin  goes  on  to 
state  that  domestic  life  was  seriously  endangered  by  the  ex- 
tensive employment  of  women  and  girls  in  the  factories;  for 
ignorance  of  all  household  duties  had  quickly  become  the  rule 
among  them.  The  old-fashioned  economist  proceeds:  "The 
females  are  wholly  uninstructed  in  knitting,  sewing,  and  other 
domestic  affairs  requisite  to  make  them  frugal  wives  and 
mothers.  This  is  a  very  great  misfortune  to  them  and  to  the 
public,  as  is  sadly  proved  by  a  comparison  of  the  labourers  in 
husbandry  and  of  manufacturers  in  general.  In  the  former 
we  meet  with  neatness,  cleanliness,  and  comfort;  in  the  latter 
with  filth,  rags,  and  poverty." 

These  observations,  commonplace  reading  now  but  startling 
enough  in  that  early  day  of  the  spinning  and  weaving  mill,  may 
well  be  supplemented  by  another  English  work,  "The  Historv 
of  the  Factory  Movement,^'  in  which  the  author  says:  "In 
stench,  in  heated  rooms,  amidst  the  constant  whirling  of  a 
thousand  wheels,  little  fingers  and  little  feet  are  kept  in  cease- 
less action,  forced  into  unnatural  activity." 

Still  further  to  corroborate  such  testimony  regarding  this 
period    of    England's    industrial    progress,    there    are    the    well- 


CHILD  LABOR  ii 

known  '"Memoirs  of  Robert  Blincoe/'  the  Blue-books  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  nineteenth  centur\-,  and  the  letters  and  speeches 
of  Lord  Ashley,  afterward  famous  as  that  Earl  of  Shaftes- 
bury who  so  unfalteringly  championed  the  cause  of  the  Eng- 
lish working-people,  thus  devoting  his  great  powers  to  pre- 
serving the  very  life-blood  of  the  English  nation. 

Xo  more  authorities  need  be  mentioned,  though  many  others 
tell  the  same  story  of  grinding  toil,  domestic  neglect,  ultimate 
disease  and  deformity,  startling  mortality,  and  appalling  deg- 
radation. The  picture  of  Shaftesbury  at  the  factory  gates 
in  that  dead  and  gone  age,  watching  the  despondent,  sunken- 
cytd  children  issuing  forth,  scanning  pitifully  the  numerous 
maimed  and  distorted  forms  among  them,  the  unvarying  hope- 
lessness of  the  hollow  little  faces,  cannot  be  forgotten  while  a 
semblance  of  those  conditions  exists  in  any  corner  of  the  civil- 
ized globe.  No  one  fails  to  recognize  that,  even  if  this  man 
had  stood  utterly  alone  in  his  comprehension  and  pity  of  the 
misery  before  him,  some  revolution  must  have  issued  from 
such  an  hour. 

As  early  as  1802,  an  act  was  passed  in  the  British  Parlia- 
ment "for  the  preservation  of  the  health  and  morals  of  ap- 
prentices and  others  employed  in  cotton  and  other  mills."  Here 
begins  the  history  of  legislation  restrictive  of  child  labor.  The 
inconsiderable  exception  of  those  Russian  enactments  peculiar 
in  their  class,  bearing  the  early  dates  of  1763  and  1764,  which, 
by  protecting  to  a  very  slight  degree  the  toiler  in  general, 
somewhat  shielded  childhood  also,  need  scarcely  be  noted, 
since  the  fact  remains  unaltered  that  we  must  look  to  England 
for  the  most  complete  and  authentic  history  of  child  labor 
and  the  evils  in  its  train,  as  well  as  for  a  record  of  the  earliest 
and  most  effective  remedial  measures  applied  to  the  uprooting 
of  such  evils. 

When  the  elder  Sir  Robert  Peel,  worthy  pioneer  of  labor 
legislation,  had  secured  the  passage  of  the  act  of  1802  amelio- 
rating in  a  limited  sense  the  condition  of  child  labor  in  cotton 
and  woolen  mills,  the  most  pernicious  features  of  the  system 
disappeared  for  a  time.  The  hours  of  work  were  by  the  re- 
quirements of  this  bill  reduced  to  only  twelve  per  day!     They 


12  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

had  been  fifteen  or  sixteen.  Public  sentiment  was  so  deeply- 
stirred  that  the  degrading  custom  of  apprenticing  the  parish 
poor,  half-witted  children,  and  other  incapables,  to  the  mill- 
owners,  had  also  to  be  discontinued. 

Yet,  as  contrasted  with  the  existing  evils  of  the  day,  the  re- 
sults accomplished  by  this  first  prohibitive  labor  legislation 
must  appear  to  us  meager,  sorry,  unworthy  of  the  originator 
as  well  as  of  the  advanced  social  state  of  England  in  general. 
Children  other  than  apprentices  streamed  into  the  factories, 
and  the  cottage  life  of  Great  Britain  shortly  began  to  feel  and 
show  the  depletion.  During  the  whole  of  the  period  from  1800 
to  1820,  continuing,  though  in  a  slightly  modified  form,  to  1840 
or  1850,  the  effects  of  that  merciless  system  of  child  labor  in 
the  Lancastrian  and  adjacent  mills  were  shown  in  the  early 
deaths  of  the  majority  of  such  workers  and  in  the  distorted 
forms  of  the  majority  of  the  survivors.  Gibbins,  who  has 
faithfully  chronicled  that  period,  speaks  also  of  the  disastrous 
effects  upon  the  women  and  grown-up  girls,  and  goes  on  to 
write  as  follows  of  the  deplorable  system: 

"A  curious  inversion  of  the  proper  order  of  things  was  seen 
in  the  domestic  economy  of  the  victims  of  this  cheap  labour 
system ;  for  women  and  girls  were  superseding  men  in  manu- 
facturing labour,  and,  in  consequence,  their  husbands  had  often 
to  attend,  in  a  shiftless,  slovenly  fashion,  to  those  household 
duties  which  mothers  and  daughters,  hard  at  work  in  the 
factories,  were  unable  to  fulfill.  Worse  still,  mothers  and 
fathers  in  some  cases  lived  upon  the  killing  labour  of  their 
little  children,  by  letting  them  out  to  hire  to  manufacturers, 
who  found  them  cheaper  than  their  parents." 

Here  is  the  same  sorry  story  that  we  have  learned  by  heart 
from  a  more  modern  page  in  New  England's  economic  and 
domestic  history,  and,  alas !  the  same  story  that  is  to-day  tak- 
ing living  shape  in  the  factory  towns  of  our  Southern  States, 
barring  such  modifications  as  grow  out  of  a  forced  concession 
to  the  demands  of  the  present  era.  Indeed,  in  every  nation, 
age,  and  section,  when  a  quickly  growing  industry  such  as 
textile  manufacturing  has  gathered  to  its  sudden  needs  all 
available  labor,  calling  the  woman  from  hearthstone  duties  and 


CHILD  LABOR  13 

the  child  from  lessons  and  play,  there  is  read  the  same  fearful 
tale,  the  same  inescapable  disaster  must  come  in  due  sequence 
before  the  land  is  shaken  into  recognition  and  resistance  of  the 
evil.  No  State's  experience  seems  wholly  to  save  another 
from  having  to  pass  through  its  own.  The  emphatic  dogma 
of  certain  creeds  that  requires  experiential  knowledge  of  sin 
to  precede  the  perfect  joy  of  regeneration  appears  to  be  the 
prevailing  law  in  this  phase  of  development  also. 

In  England,  although  Sir  Robert  Peel's  measure  of  1802 
was  soon  fought  into  ineffectiveness  by  the  might  of  the  manu- 
facturers, who  were  shortly  open  enough  in  crowding  their 
foul-smelling  torture-places  again  with  young  and  tender 
children,  yet  the  public  had  been  aroused  and  moreover  the 
fact  had  been  demonstrated,  even  if  feebly,  that  there  was 
efficacy  in  restrictive  legislation.  The  strength  of  the  races 
bound  together  by  Anglo-Saxon  traits  and  traditions  has  Iain 
preeminently  in  their  recognition  of  the  responsibilities  of  the 
future  quite  as  much  as  the  present.  The  first  element  to  be 
considered  in  the  race's  future  is  the  health — physical,  mental,  f 
and  moral — of  the  coming  generations.  When  Englishmen  \ 
began  to  tell  one  another,  not  in  Lancaster  alone  but  from  end  p 
to  end  of  Britain,  that  the  intelligence  of  the  future  genera- 
tions of  working-people,  bone  and  sinew  of  the  nation,  was 
being  stultified,  their  bodily  powers  reduced,  and  their  moral 
tone  lowered  by  the  arduous  labors  and  unclean  surroundings 
of  immature  children,  it  required  no  prophetic  tongue  to  fore- 
tell remedial  legislation  close  at  hand. 

But,  although  England  to-day  enjoys  the  enviable  distinction  ) 
of  having  the  best  regulated  factory  system  in  the  world,  she 
arrived  at  this,  as  she  arrives  at  most  things,  by  slow  grada- 
tions. Troublous  signs  and  portents  in  the  first  third  of  the 
nineteenth  century  hurried  Parliament  into  measures  that 
merely  temporized — measures  that  later  were  with  difficulty 
displaced  by  effective  and  permanent  laws.  Criminnlity.  among 
thejaboring  classes  showed  a  fright fjjLincrease_by  the  time  a 
generatioiPHad'  worked  through  the  mills,  going  "blunted  in 
morals  and  blind  in  intellect  from  the  sphere  of  childhood  to 
full    political    sovereignty."      Next,    it    was    made    matter    of 


0 


14  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

public  information  that  the  manufacturing  and  mining  districts 
could  no  longer  supply  their  quota  of  able-bodied  men  for  the 
army,  while  military  officials  entered  constant  complaint  of  the 
itlierior  size  and  strength  of  the  recruits  furnished.  The  cause 
could  not  be  denied,  but  unfortunately  the  remedy  required 
much  debate  and  many  experiments. 

Champion  after  champion  appeared  before  Parliament 
praying  that  the  children  of  the  State  be  defended.  The  manu- 
facturers, panoplied  in  greed  and  gold,  constituted  a  host  diffi- 
cult to  gain  ground  from;  but  the  righteous  cause  pressed  on 
step  by  step.  In  1815  Sir  Robert  Peel  again  urged  the  matter 
with  such  overwhelming  arguments  that  Parliament  was  con- 
strained to  the  appointment  of  a  "Committee  of  Inquiry"  to 
investigate  conditions  and  make  honorable  and  fair  report  be- 
fore the  body. 

The  issue  of  this  investigation  was  the  enactment,  in  1819,  of 
a  law  forbidding  the  employment  of  children  under  nine  years 
of  age  in  factories  and  limiting  the  hours  of  labor  of  those 
under  sixteen  to  twelve  a  day,  with  one  hour  and  a  half  taken 
from  this  for  meals.  In  1825  Sir  John  Cam  Hobhouse  secured 
the  passage  of  a  measure  that  went  a  step  further,  and,  among 
other  provisions,  contained  a  requirement  for  abridging  the 
hours  of  labor  on  Saturdays. 

The  act  of  1831  prohibited  night  work  to  all  between  the 
ages  of  nine  and  twenty-one — a  most  important  point  gained ; 
moreover,  it  limited  the  hours  of  labor  of  all  persons  under 
eighteen  years  to  twelve  a  day  except  on  Saturdays,  when  the 
Hmit  was  nine  hours. 

But  it  was  not  until  1833,  when  Lord  Ashley,  afterward 
Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  came  to  the  front  as  the  advocate  of  pro- 
tective legislation  for  the  working  classes,  that  sufficiently 
stringent  measures  were  taken  to  prevent  the  decay  of  England. 
During  his  long  career,  one  statutory  enactment  after  another 
was  fought  through  Parliament,  each  bringing  about  some 
urgently  needed  modification  as  regards  hours,  conditions,  and 
age  of  factory  operatives.  When  these  had  culmination  in 
the  Ten  Hours'  bill  of  1847,  the  Minimum  Age  bill  of  1874, 
and  the  excellent  amendments  of  these  in   1878  and   1891,  the 


CHILD  LABOR  15 

necessary  bulwark  against  national  decadence  might  at  last  be 
called  complete. 

Since  1847,  no  child  under  thirteen  years  of  age  has  been 
allowed  to  work  exceeding  five  to  seven  hours  a  day  in  English 
mills,  and  no  person  under  eighteen  exceeding  ten  hours.  In 
1874,  the  age  for  a  full  day's  work  was  raised  to  fourteen 
years  and  stringent  provisions  made  for  the  attendance  at 
school  between  work  periods.  The  measure  of  1878  consoli- 
dated and  amended  all  existing  laws  for  the  regulation  of  child 
labor  and  provided  adequate  means  for  their  enforcement.  By 
this  measure  the  employment  of  children  under  ten  years  was 
totally  prohibited,  a  limit  that  was  in  1891  raised  to  eleven 
years.  Greatly  improved  sanitation  was  also  provided  for  in 
the  1878  enactment,  and  adequate  safeguards  against  accidents 
were  set  up.  Periodic  medical  certificates  were  required  from 
all  operatives  under  sixteen  years ;  employees  were  compelled 
to  obtain  weekly  certificates  proving  the  necessary  school  at- 
tendance, and  a  sufficient  number  of  inspectors  was  demanded 
to  execute  the  provisions  of  this  comprehensive  act. 

Such  is,  in  brief,  the  history  of  what  has  come  to  be  called 
the  child-labor  movement  in  England.  To  follow  it  at  similar 
length  in  France,  Germany,  Russia,  Austria,  is  impossible  in 
a  single  article.  The  processes  were  much  the  same  in  all  ad- 
vanced European  nations,  and  the  ultimate  results  were  like 
those  enumerated.  The  age  limit  for  the  beginning  of  work 
in  textile  factories  is  a  year  higher  in  these  countries  than  in 
Great  Britain,  but  other  provisions  scarcely  average  so  well. 
Yet,  on  the  whole,  their  regulations  are  so  nearly  uniform  with 
those  of  England  that  we  may  well  leave  them  for  the  present 
and  turn  to  our  own  country. 

In  this  Western  Republic,  the  introduction  of  machinery  for 
textile  manufactures  on  a  large  scale  was  much  later  than  in 
England ;  therefore,  the  demand  for  remedial  legislation  re- 
lating to  factory  workers  cannot  be  traced  back  to  so  early  a 
period.  But  no  sooner  were  the  large  mills  established  in  New 
England,  early  in  the  last  century,  than  the  curse  began  to  be 
felt.  The  agile  fingers  and  feet  of  little  children  were  needed 
here  as  in  old  England;  their  cheap  lives  and  unaccounted  little 


4 


i6  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

souls  were  bartered  as  readily  here  as  there.  ,  They  were 
crowded  into  the  new  infernos,  and  the  river  towns  where  the 
great  mills  hummed  were  shortly  rich  from  such  barter  and 
sale. 

The  struggle  to  rescue  the  little  ones  was  initiated  in  Massa- 
chusetts about  1830.  Six  years  later  an  inadequate  law  for  pro- 
tection was  passed;  but  it  was  not  until  1866  that  this  strong 
commonwealth  was  able  to  enact  the  first  really  effective 
measure,  nor  until  1894  that  she  could  write  upon  her  statute- 
books  the  law  prohibiting  children  under  thirteen  years  of  age 
from  being  regularly  employed  in  textile  factories.  Excellent 
limitations  as  to  hours  and  provision  for  education,  are  now 
embodied  in  her  code,  and  to-day  the  Bay  State  stands  a  fair 
pattern  for  others  in  the  Union  in  regard  to  this  most  import- 
ant phase  of  protective  legislation. 

Connecticut  followed  Massachusetts  closely  in  throwing  the 
State's  protective  arm  around  her  children,  New  York  and 
Pennsylvania  pressing  behind  Connecticut,  and  others  falling 
gradually  into  line,  until,  at  the  opening  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, twenty-six  out  of  the  sisterhood  could  show  statutory  en- 
actments of  this  nature  worthy  to  rank  with  those  of  Great 
Britain. 

At  present  all  eyes  are  turned  upon  the  South  Atlantic  and 
Gulf  States,  to  ascertain  the  results  of  the  movement  now  be- 
ing agitated  there.  As  manufacturing  reached  them  tardily, 
child  labor  in  textile  mills  was  an  unknown  evil  in  this  section 
until  very  recent  times.  Even  fifteen  years  ago  the  factories 
were  few,  and  the  half-million  spindles,  widely  scattered,  drew 
mainly  cheap  adult  labor  to  their  service.  ' 

The  marvelous  industrial  transformation  of  the  last  decade 
has  wrought  as  great  a  change  in  the  moral  questions  bound 
up  with  such  development.  The  mills  in  the  South  are  sud- 
denly reckoned  by  the  hundred.s,  soon  by  the  thousands,  and 
the  people  of  that  section  are  confronted  with  the  appalling  fact 
that  in  many  of  these  mills  from  20  to  30  per  cent,  of  the 
operatives  are  under  sixteen  years  of  age,  hundreds  of  them 
being  children  of  twelve,  eleven,  ten,  and  in  some  cases  even 
younger. 


CHILD  LABOR  17 

Public  feeling  has  been  greatly  stirred  on  this  score  during 
the  last  two  or  three  years,  and  bills  for  regulating  child  labor 
are  now  pending  before  the  General  Assembly  of  every  cotton- 
growing  State  that  has  also  entered  cotton  manufacturing. 
Tennessee,  a  sister  of  these  and.  although  reckoned  chiefly  a 
grain-producing  and  pastoral  State,  yet  rich  in  minerals  and 
boasting  many  large  woolen  mills,  merits  particular  mention  as 
having  already  passed  an  enactment  fixing  the  age  of  employ- 
ment of  children  in  factories,  mines  and  similar  places  of  labor 
at  fourteen  years,  while  Louisiana  has  for  almost  a  decade  re- 
stricted  the   age   of   girls   to   fourteen   and   of   boys   to   twelve. 

But  kindred  measures,  though,  earnestly  fought  for  during 
last  winter's  legislative  sessions  in  Georgia,  Alabama,  and  the 
Carolinas,  were  unfortunately  lost  in  each  case,  adding  a  new 
defeat  to  those  of  several  preceding  years.  It  is  on  this  account 
that  the  movement  in  the  South  is  now  attracting  an  interest  so 
eager  and  widespread,  both  at  home  and  in  England.  The  ad- 
vocates of  protection  are  claiming  that  a  victory  is  at  hand, 
pointing  to  the  overwhelming  gain  they  had  made  in 
each  of  these  four  States  last  winter  over  the  preceding  season, 
and  estimating,  with  sound  reason,  that  a  similar  gain  in  the 
twelve  months  ending  will  put  them  out  of  reach  of  defeat. 
But  the  danger  is,  lest  in  their  optimism  they  have  forgotten 
with  what  unparalleled  efforts  the  capitalists  and  promoters 
have  worked  against  the  measure  in  the  same  period. 

This,  then,  is  in  brief  outline  the  story  of  the  movement  to 
preserve  Anglo:-Saxon_children,  and  the  great  countries  they 
stand  for,  from  premature  blight  and  decay.  The  logic  of  such 
a  movement  needs  no  exposition,  nor  can  its  importance  as  an 
element  in  the  maintenance  of  the  economic  and  moral  su- 
premacy of  the  foremost  two  nations  be  overestimated.  Yet. 
again,  the  ultimate  issue  in  this  latest  section  to  face  such  a 
crisis  requires  no  seer  to  foretell.  The  triumph  of  right  may 
be  still  a  while  delayed ;  but  that  it  is  coming  at  a  more  speedy 
pace  to  the  New  South  than  to  New  or  Old  England  no  one 
acquainted  with  conditions  will  attempt  to  deny. 


i8  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25:  417-29.  May  19,  1905. 

Child  Labor  in  the  United  States  and  Its  Great  Attendant  Evils. 
Felix  Adler. 

At  the  beginning  of  1903  it  is  estimated  that  there  were  in  the 
factories  of  the  South — chiefly  cotton  factories — about  20.000 
children  under  the  age  of  twelve.  Twelve  is  a  very  early  age  at 
which  to  begin  work;  but  under  the  age  of  twelve,  and  20,000, 
and  in  the  United  States  of  America — who  would  have  credited 
it?  And  these  children,  too,  not  the  children  of  foreign  im- 
migrants, but  for  the  most  part  the  offspring  of  the  purest 
American  stock  of  this  continent;  and  some  of  these  children,  as 
eye  witnesses  attest,  were  at  their  work  even  more  than  twelve 
hours,  as  much  as  thirteen  and  fourteen  hours  a  day.  Where  are 
our  instincts  of  mercy,  where  is  the  motherliness  of  the  women  of 
this  country,  whither  is  the  chivalry  of  our  men  that  should 
seek  a  glory  in  protecting  the  defenseless  and  the  weak?  Within 
the  last  two  years  child  labor  laws  have  been  passed  which  have 
doubtless  reduced  the  number  of  children  under  twelve  years  of 
age  in  the  factories;  how  great  the  reduction  is  it  is  impossible 
to  say.  But  the  South  is  by  no  means  singular,  though  it  has  of 
late  been  more  conspicuous  in  its  employment  of  child  labor 
than  other  sections  of  the  country.  And  there  is  no  excuse  for 
adopting  a  pharasaical  attitude  toward  the  southern  communities 
and  saying:  "We  are  glad  that  we  are  not  like  these."  For  in 
the  first  place,  in  not  a  few  instances  it  is  northern  capital  in- 
vested in  southern  mills  that  shares  the  responsibility  for  the 
conditions  named;  and  then  again,  while  the  proportion  of  child 
to  adult  labor  in  the  South  is  greater  than  anywhere  else  in  the 
country,  the  absolute  number  of  children  employed  is  greater  in 
the  industrial  centers  of  the  North. 

The  lack  of  adequate  statistical  inquiries  makes  it  impossible 
to  express  in  figures  the  extent  of  the  evil  of  child  labor.  But 
wherever  investigation  is  undertaken,  wherever  the  surface  is 
even  scratched,  we  are  shocked  to  find  to  what  an  extent  the 
disease  is  eating  its  way  underneath,  even  in  those  States  in  which 


CHILD  LABOR  19 

legislation  on  the  subject  is  almost  ideal.  The  laws  are  admir- 
able, but  the  enforcement  is  defective.  Thus  glancing  over  the 
reports  recently  transmitted  to  the  National  Child  Labor  Com- 
mittee by  its  agents  I  find  that  in  New  Jersey,  in  one  of  the 
woolen  mills,  200  children  under  the  legal  age  are  at  work.  In 
the  glass  industry  of  Ohio,  Pennsylvania,  and  West  Virginia,  the 
evils  of  premature  work  and  of  night  work  are  combined.  A 
boy,  Willie  Davis,  for  instance,  thirteen  years  old,  works  on 
alternate  nights  from  6 130  p.  m.  to  4 130  a.  m.,  earning  ninety 
cents  a  day.  In  one  of  the  glass  houses  of  Wheeling,  W.  Va., 
forty  boys  were  seen  by  the  agent,  apparently  from  ten  to  twelve 
years  of  age ;  one  child  looked  not  over  nine  years  old,  "but  was 
too  busy  to  be  interviewed."  In  this  place  3,000  children  of  the 
school  age  were  found  to  be  out  of  school.  In  this  town  there  "J^ 
are  also  many  cigar  factories  that  employ  children.  And  speaking 
of  the  tobacco  industry  reminds  me  of  the  case  of  a  child  worker 
just  reported  from  Pittsburgh.  The  boy  is  employed  in  a  toby 
factory — "tobies"  being  a  cheap  kind  of  cigar — in  rolling  tobies. 
He  is  twelve  years  of  age ;  he  has  already  been  at  work  for  seven 
month sj^ Vthe  hours  of  labor"  are  trom  0  a.  m.  to  8  p.  m.,  inter-^ 
^missTon  tor  lunch  fifteen  minutes,  for  supper  twenty  minutejl 
'in  allthirtv-£ve  minutes  in  fourteen  hours^/Tle  works  ISaturday 
nightsfrom  seven  until  midnight^  and  sometimes  until  2  Sunday 
morning;  does  not  work  Saturdays,  but  works  Sundays.  The 
room  in  which  he  rolls  his  "tobies"  is  described  as  dark  and 
poorly  ventilated ;  the  atmosphere  is  charged  with  tobacco  dust. 
The  boy  seems  gentle  and  uncomplaining,  but  he  coughs ;  and 
when  he  was  asked  whether  he  was  well,  he  pointed  to  his  chest 
and  to  his  back  and  said :  "I  have  a  pain  here  and  there." 

And  in  our  own  state  of  New  York,  which  in  point  of  legisla- 
tion is  in  advance  of  all  the  rest,  the  infractions  of  the  law  that 
occur  are  frightful  enough,  as  the  petition  for  the  removal  of 
the  present  Factory  Inspector  sent  to  the  Governor  by  the  Child 
Labor  Committee  of  New  York  plainly  proves.  In  a  single  one 
of  the  canning  factories  where  abuses  are  particularly  flagrant, 
the  foreman  himself  estimated  the  number  of  children  at  work  in 
violation  of  the  law  to  be  300.  Children  as  young  as  ten,  nine, 
and  seven  were  found  to  be  at  work  side  by  side  with  their 
mothers,  from  9  a.m.  to  9  p.m.      In  the  Chelsea  Jute  Mills  of 


20  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

Brooklyn,  an  establishment  which  acquired  an  unenviable  not- 
oriety in  connection  with  the  Annie  Ventre  case  some  months 
ago,  there  are  reported  to  be  at  the  present  time  85  children  at 
work  under  the  legal  age.  In  the  sweated  trades  the  evils  are  the 
same,  or  if  possible  worse.  The  report  further  states  that  the 
number  of  violations,  not  of  the  child  labor  laws  in  particular 
but  of  the  factory  laws  in  general,  are  alarmingly  on  the  in- 
crease; 33,000  reported  in  1901,  50,000  in  1903. 

And  now  let  us  briefly  consider  some  of  the  arguments  that 
are  advanced  in  favor  of  child  labor,  and  the  grounds  upon 
which  they  are  to  be  rejected.  The  first  argument  is,  that  neces- 
sity knows  no  compunction ;  that  however  undesirable  it  may 
seem  to  harness  young  children  to  the  yoke  of  toil,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  do  without  them,  because  if  child  labor  laws  are  enforced 
certain  important  branches  of  industry  will  cease  to  be  profitable. 
For  instance,  in  the  glass  industry.  It  is  said  that  this  industry 
cannot  be  carried  on  without  the  aid  of  young  boys,  and  of  the 
textile  industries  in  the  South  the  same  has  been  averred.  This 
argument  is  as  old  as  human  avarice,  and  it  appears  again  and 
again  in  modern  economic  history.  It  is  fallacious,  for  the  rea- 
son that  cheap  labor  is  not  really  cheap,  and  that  higher  paid 
labor — in  this  case  the  labor  of  adults  as  compared  with  that  of 
children — is  not  really  more  expensive.  The  prohibition  of  the 
cheap  labor  of  the  child  is  favorable  to  the  invention  and  use  of 
labor-saving  devices;  it  challenges  and  promotes  a  more 
efficient  organization  of  the  business;  and  it  imparts  a 
higher  value  to  the  product,  because  of  the  greater  skill, 
vigor  and  interest  of  the  labor  that  enters  into  the  pro- 
duct. As  a  matter  of  fact,  at  the  time  when  the  two  prin- 
cipal industries  of  England — the  textile  and  the  coal  mining 
industries — were  prohibited  from  employing  children,  there 
was  a  tremendous  outcry,  and  it  was  freely  predicted  that 
those  branches  would  cease  to  be  profitable,  and  especially 
that  England  would  cease  to  be  able  to  compete  in  the  matter 
of  textiles  and  coal  with  foreign  countries.  But  what  has 
been  the  event?  That  England  is  stronger  to-day — not  in  spite 
of,  but  because  she  has  forbidden,  child  labor —  in  just  those  two 
branches  of  industry  than  she  was  at  the  time  when  those  sinis- 
ter predictions  were  uttered.    And  so  if  it  is  said  that  the  glass 


CHILD  LABOR  21 

industry  cannot  be  carried  on  without  child  labor  there  is  the  fact 
to  be  noted  that  the  largest  glasshouse  in  the  state  of  Ohio  is 
carried  on  without  child  labor,  and  does  not  appear  to  be  con- 
ducted at  a  loss. 

A  second  argument  is  the  attempt  to  block  a  humanitarian 
movement  for  a  seemingly  humanitarian  reason,  the  reason  being 
that  the  labor  of  these  little  hands  is  necessary  to  relieve  the  pov- 
erty of  their  families,  and  that  it  is  cruel  to  deprive  the  poor 
of  that  increase  of  their  weekly  earnings — even  if  it  be  only  two 
or  three  dollars — which  little  children  are  able  to  supply.  In 
answer  to  this  plea  it  must  be  said  that  the  actual  state  of  the  case 
is  sometimes  quite  different  from  what  is  supposed.  For  in- 
stance, I  have  in  mind  the  case  of  a  boy  who,  fifteen  years  of 
age,  was  sadly  overworked,  his  hours  being  from  6  a.  m.  to  10 
p.  m.  The  father  of  this  boy  earns  from  six  to  seven  dollars  a 
day.  Surely  this  is  not  a  case  in  which  the  necessity  of  the  parent 
excuses  the  overtaxing  of  the  strength  of  a  young  boy.  In  other 
cases  parents  are  found  to  lead  a  parasitic  life,  reversing  the  order 
of  nature,  the  adults  living  at  the  expense  of  the  children.  Econom- 
ically it  is  brought  home  to  us,  that  the  wage  earned  by  children 
is  not  really  an  increase  of  the  family  earnings ;  that  where  there 
is  competition  between  children  and  men  the  wages  of  the  men 
are  thereby  reduced ;  so  that  a  family  in  which  man,  woman,  and 
child  are  breadwinners,  may  not  earn  more — sometimes  earns 
less — than  the  income  gained  by  the  man  when  the  man  alone  was 
the  breadwinner.  And  again,  in  those  cases  of  genuine  hard- 
ship which  undoubtedly  occur,  especially  where  women  have  been 
left  widowed  with  the  care  of  a  family  upon  their  hands,  and 
where  the  small  earnings  of  children  ten  and  eleven  years  of 
age  do  make  an  appreciable  difference  (cases  have  occurred 
of  loyal  little  men  under  the  age  limit  coming  to  the  mills  with 
tears  in  their  eyes  and  begging  to  be  allowed  to  labor  for  their 
mothers'  sake)  ;  I  say  in  such  cases  it  is  wiser  for  society  to  com- 
mend indeed  the  loyalty  of  these  little  fellows,  but  to  send  them 
to  school,  and  to  follow  the  example  of  Ohio,  which  has  spread 
a  law  upon  its  statute  books  looking  to  the  public  relief  of  des- 
titute families  of  this  kind.  It  is  better  for  the  state  to  furnish 
outright  relief  than  to  see  the  standard  of  living  of  whole  sec- 
tions of  the  population  lowered  by  child  competition. 


22  SELECTED  ARTICLES 


Y 


These  are  the  two  main  arguments.  There  is  one  other  argu- 
ment, so  un-American  and  so  inhuman  that  I  am  almost 
ashamed  to  quote  it,  and  yet  it  has  been  used,  and  I  fear  is 
secretly  in  the  minds  of  some  who  would  not  openly  stand  for 
it.  A  manufacturer  standing  near  the  furnace  of  a  glass  house 
and  pointing  to  a  procession  of  young  Slav  boys  who  were  car- 
rying the  glass  on  trays,  remarked:  "Look  at  their  faces,  and 
you  will  see  that  it  is  idle  to  take  them  from  the  glass-house  in 
order  to  give  them  an  education ;  they  are  what  they  are,  and 
will  always  remain  what  they  are."  He  meant  that  there  are 
some  human  beings — and  these  Slavs  of  the  number — who  are 
mentally  irredeemable,  so  fast  asleep  intellectually  that  they 
cannot  be  awakened ;  designed  by  nature,  therefore,  to  be  hew- 
ers of  wood  and  drawers  of  water.  This  cruel  and  wicked 
thing  was  said  of  Slavs ;  it  is  the  same  thing  which  has  been 
said  from  time  immemorial  by  the  slave  owners  of  their  slaves. 
First  they  degrade  human  beings  by  denying  them  the  opportu- 
nity to  develop  their  better  nature;  no  schools,  no  teaching,  no 
freedom,  no  outlook;  and  then,  as  if  in  mockery,  they  point  to 
the  degraded  condition  of  their  victims  as  a  reason  why  they 
should  never  be  allowed  to  escape  from  it. 

These  are  the  arguments  advanced  for  child  labor.  What 
I  have  summarily  said  may  suffice  for  their  refutation ;  but  I 
shall  not  content  myself  merely  with  the  negative  attitude  of 
meeting  our  opponents,  and  I  should  like  in  approaching  the  close 
of  my  address  to  present  the  grand  positive  reason  why  child 
servitude  should  be  abolished  throughout  the  length  and  breadth 
of  this  land.  The  battle  is  sometimes  put  on  what  are  called 
sentimental  grounds.  Any  one  who  has  children  of  his  own 
cannot  help  enduring  a  certain  anguish  in  thinking  of  such  cases 
as  those  of  the  little  children  treading  up  and  down  those  stairs 
of  the  inferno  of  the  English  coal  mines  with  buckets  of  coal 
on  their  backs,  or  of  the  little  children  in  the  mills  returning  to 
their  squalid  homes  at  2.30  in  the  morning,  or  of  the  little  boy 
rolling  "tobies"  in  the  dark  and  ill-ventilated  room  for  fourteen 
mortal  hours,  coughing,  with  a  pain  "here  and  there."  And  when 
we  picture  these  things  and  realize  what  they  mean  we  are  apt 
to  cry  out  in  a  sort  of  wild  indignation,  saying:  "These  things 
must  stop ;  we  will  not  permit  them  to  go  on."    In  other  words. 


CHILD  LABOR  %^ 

we  think  of  the  individual  children;  and  as  we  are  men  and 
women  capable  of  sympathetic  feeling,  our  hearts  bleed  for  them. 

But  in  addition  w^e  must  never  forget  that  beyond  the  individ- 
ual interest  there  is*^  vast  social  interest  at  stake,  the  interest  of 
American  civilization,  of  human  civilization,  of  all  those  genera- 
tions that  are  to  succeed  us.  The  reason  why  child  labor  must  be 
abolished,  apart  from  the  sufferings  of  individuals,  is  one  which 
biology  and  ethics  combine  to  enforce  upon  us.  The  higher  the 
type  of  living  being  the  finer  the  organism,  the  longer  the  period 
of  time  required  for  its  maturing.  The  young  of  birds  and  of 
the  lower  animals  are  full  grown  after  a  few  days  or  a  few 
weeks.  They  acquire  with  incredible  rapidity  the  use  of  inherit- 
ed instincts,  and  after  the  shortest  infancy  are  ready  to  take  up 
the  struggle  for  existence  after  the  fashion  of  their  species. 
The  human  being  requires  a  period  of  preparation  extending 
over  years  before  he  is  ready  to  take  up  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence after  the  human  fashion.  First  infancy,  then  childhood, 
then  early  youth  ;  and  during  all  that  period  he  must  remain  de- 
pendent on  the  protection  and  the  nurture  of  adult  kinsfolk.  If 
that  period  is  curtailed  the  end  of  Nature  in  this  highest  type  of 
living  being — man — is  thwarted.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  pre- 
mature toil  is  such  a  curse.  The  child  must  develop  physically, 
and  to  do  so  it  must  play;  the  child  must  develop  mentally,  and 
to  do  so  it  must  be  sent  to  school ;  the  child  must  develop  morally, 
and  to  do  so  it  must  be  kept  within  the  guarded  precincts  of  the 
home. 

The  physical  effects  of  precocious  childhood  are  arrest  of 
growth,  puny,  stunted  stature,  anaemia,  thin,  emaciated  limbs, 
sunken  cheeks  and  hollow  eyes ;  and  diseases  of  all  kinds — of  the 
lungs,  of  the  joints,  of  the  spine — for  arrest  of  development  does 
not  mean  mere  arrest,  but  means  malformation. 

The  mental  effects  of  precocity  labor  are  likewise  arrest  of 
mental  development;  and  this,  too,  means  not  only  a  stopping 
short  but  a  development  in  the  wrong  direction.  The  brilliant 
but  short-lived  intelligence  of  many  newsboys,  their  high-strung 
excitability,  their  sinister  anticipation  of  world  knowledge,  fol- 
lowed often  by  torpor  and  mental  exhaustion  later  on  are  an 
instance  in  point.     We  laugh  at  and  applaud  their  sallies  of  wit, 


24  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

their  quick  repartee,  their  seeming  ability  to  play  the  game  of 
life  on  a  par  with  adults;  we  do  not  look  beyond  the  moment, 
nor  count  the  cost  they  pay. 

And  the  moral  effects,  as  is  to  be  expected,  are  of  the  same 
sort:  loosening  of  family  ties,  roving  the  streets,  familiarity  with 
vice  and  the  haunts  of  vice,  a  startling  independence  before  the 
moral  nature  is  fit  to  maintain  independence,  a  process  of  selec- 
tion so  trying  that  while  sometimes  it  leads  those  subjected  to  it 
to  distinguished  achievement,  more  often  it  leads  to  ruin. 

The  finer  the  type  the  longer  the  period  needed  for  the  ma- 
turing of  it.  In  the  case  of  youths  dedicated  to  the  professions, 
the  period  of  preparation  at  present  extends  far  into  the  twenties. 
In  the  case  of  all  who  are  to  be  component  members  of  this 
American  nation,  to  carry  on  its  great  traditions  and  help  in  solv' 
ing  its  tremendous  problems,  the  period  of  preparation  should 
not  be  cut  short  below  the  sixteenth  year.  This  is  the  standard 
toward  which  we  are  working,  toward  which  we  hope  to  approxi- 
mate— more  rapidly  in  the  older  communities,  more  patiently  and 
with  a  due  regard  to  all  the  interests  involved  in  the  less  ad- 
vanced communities.  But  we  look  forward  to  the  day  when  the 
standard  shall  be  adopted  in  all  the  American  Commonwealths, 
and  the  total  abolition  of  child  labor  in  every  form  shall  be  the 
honorable  achievement  of  the  entire  American  people. 

The  emancipation  of  childhood  from  economic  servitude  is  a 
social  reform  of  the  first  magnitude.  It  is  also  one  upon  which 
we  can  all  unite.  There  are  so  many  proposed  reforms  upon 
which  it  is  impossible  to  secure  agreement,  different  minds, 
though  alike  honest,  inevitably  differing  with  regard  to  them. 
But  here  is  a  reform  upon  which  we  can  agree,  which  must  ap- 
peal to  every  right  thinking  person,  and  which  is  urgent.  And 
one  particular  advantage  of  it  I  should  like  to  point  out,  namely, 
that  it  is  calculated  to  be  the  best  induction  into  the  right  spirit  of 
social  reform,  that  it  will  attune  the  community  in  which  it  is 
achieved  to  a  favorable  reception  of  sane  and  sound  social  re- 
forms generally.  Because  if  once  it  comes  to  be  an  understood 
thing  that  a  certain  sacredness  "doth  hedge  around"  a  child,  that 
a  child  is  industrially  taboo,  that  to  violate  its  rights  is  to  touch 
profanely  a  holy  thing,  that  it  has  a  soul  which  must  not  be 


CHILD  LABOR  25 

blighted  for  the  prospect  of  mere  gain;  if  this  be  once  generally 
conceded  with  regard  to  the  child  the  same  essential  reasoning 
will  be  found  to  apply  also  to  the  adult  workers;  they,  too,  will 
not  be  looked  upon  as  mere  commodities,  as  mere  instruments 
for  the  accumulation  of  riches ;  to  them  also  a  certain  sacredness 
will  be  seen  to  attach,  and  certain  human  rights  to  belong,  which 
may  not  be  infringed.  I  have  great  hopes  for  the  adjustment  of 
our  labor  difficulties  on  a  higher  plane,  if  once  we  can  gain  the 
initial  victory  of  inculcating  regard  for  the  higher  human  nature 
that  is  present  potentially  in  the  child. 

And  there  is  one  additional  word  which,  if  I  may  so  far  en- 
croach upon  your  patience,  I  should  like  to  say :  It  is  not  enough 
to  shut  the  children  out  of  the  factory,  we  must  also  bring  them 
into  the  school,  and  compel  parents,  if  necessary,  to  send  them  to 
school ;  the  movement  for  compulsory  education  everywhere  goes 
hand  in  hand,  and  must  go  hand  in  hand,  with  the  child  labor 
movement. 

The  child  labor  movement  has  for  its  object  to  fence  off  an 
open  space  within  which  the  educational  institutions  of  the  coun- 
try may  do  their  perfect  work.  The  school  has  for  its  object  to 
win  from  the  human  beings,  confided  to  it  the  human  qualities 
latent  in  them,  imagination,  taste,  skill,  appreciation,  vigorous 
reasoning,  will  power,  character;  to  fulfill  the  ends  of  Nature  in 
the  finest  organism,  the  highest  type  of  living  being  which  she 
has  yet  produced.  A  more  convincing  appeal  than  comes  to  us 
from  these  two  movements  jointly,  the  child  labor  and  the  educa- 
tional movements,  in  my  judgment,  cannot  be  conceived  of.  And 
without  the  former  the  latter  cannot  succeed. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:   1-8.  January,  1907. 

Poverty  and  Parental  Dependence  as  an  Obstacle  to  Child  Labor 
Reform.     Homer  Folks. 

The  history  of  efforts  for  child  labor  legislation  shows  that 
they  usually  pass  through  three  stages  before  reaching  final 
success.  When  an  agitation  for  a  child  labor  law  is  started  the 
first  objection  raised  to  it  is  that  there  are  no  children  employ- 
ed, or  not  at  least  any  corrsiderable  number.     After  good  people 


26  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

have  gone  to  the  mines  and  factories  and  have  counted  the 
children,  and  have  gathered  undeniable  data  disproving  that 
statement,  the  next  objection  that  is  brought  forv^^ard  is  that 
While  there  may  be  some  children  employed,  after  all  such 
employment  is  a  good  thing  for  the  children,  and  some  very 
eminent  men  are  named  as  having  been  employed  in  their 
childhood,  by  reason  of  which  they  became  very  distinguished 
when    grown    up. 

After  further  research  as  to  the  evil  effects  of  child  labor, 
such  as  has  been  made  at  great  length  by  our  two  assistant 
secretaries,  and  by  many  others,  and  after  it  has  demonstrated 
beyond  question  that  this  employment  of  children  is  bad  for 
the  children,  there  still  remains  one  stronghold  to  be  taken. 
It  is  then  said:  Well,  yes,  there  are  some  children  employed, 
and  that  perhaps  it  is  not  altogether  exactly  what  one  would 
regard  as  ideal,  but  nevertheless  the  earnings  of  these  children 
are  absolutely  necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  their  families. 
Many  of  them,  it  is  said,  are  the  children  of  widows.  In  other 
cases  their  fathers  have  deserted  or  are  ill,  and,  except  for  the 
earnings  of  these  children,  the  families  would  suffer  and 
might   starve. 

That  is  the  final  stronghold  to  be  captured  by  the  friends  of 
progressive  legislation,  not  only  for  the  restriction  of  child 
labor,  but  also  for  compulsory  school  attendance  and  for  the 
exclusion  of  children  from  certain  occupations  dangerous  to 
health  or  morals.  What  was  said  by  the  friends  of  such 
legislation  until  quite  recently  was  substantially  this,  that  we 
did  not  believe  that  there  were  many  children  whose  earnings 
were  really  needed  by  their  families;  that  only  a  small  propor- 
tion of  the  children  could  be  the  children  of  widows;  that  only  a 
small  porportion  of  those  widows  were  dependent  upon  the 
earnings  of  their  children,  and  that  in  so  far  as  it  might  be 
true  that  the  earnings  of  the  children  were  needed  by  theii 
families,  it  was,  in  our  opinion,  a  great  deal  better  that  their 
income  should  be  supplemented  from  some  other  source,  and, 
furthermore,  that  it  was  our  conviction  that  other  resources 
would  be  at  hand  if  those  earnings  were  stopped.  That  was  a 


CHILD  LABOR  27 

word  of  hope  and  of  confidence,  and  of  conviction  indeed,  but 
it  was  not  at  that  time  founded  on  actual  experience. 

The  task  devolved  upon  me  is  to  set  forth  the  results  of 
several  years  of  actual  experience  in  this  direction,  and  if  I 
speak  with  comparatively  little  first  hand  knowledge  of  child 
labor  legislation  and  problems,  I  can  speak  with  sixteen  years 
of  uninterrupted  experience  in  the  study  and  actual  administra- 
tion of  charity. 

During  the  past  three  years  child  labor  legislation  has  been 
adopted  in  many  of  the  states  of  the  Union,  and  those  who 
have  been  most  active  in  procuring  that  legislation  have  taken 
up  in  earnest  the  task  of  providing  supplementary  incomes, 
when  needed,  to  replace  the  earnings  of  children  excluded  from 
employment  by  the  new  legislation.  We  now  have  back  of  us 
several  years  of  observation  and  experience  of  t'he  actual  facts 
as  they  exist,  and  we  can  now  put  the  hope  that  we  expressed 
a  few  years  before  to  the  test  of  practical  application. 

In  New  York  City  the  local  child  labor  committee  some 
fifteen  months  ago  took  this  ground,  that  whenever  the  child 
labor  law  made  it  impossible  for  any  child  under  fourteen  years 
of  age  to  be  employed,  if  his  previous  earnings  were  a  necessary 
element  in  the  family  income,  it  would  give  to  that  family, 
through  the  child,  what  it  called  a  scholarship — a  sum  of  money 
equal,  as  nearly  as  could  be  ascertained — to  the  amount  the 
child  would  have  earned,  that  is  to  say,  from  one  to  three  dol- 
lars per  week. 

An  individual  member  of  that  committee  very  generously 
offered  to  contribute  the  sum  of  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  per 
annum,  or  such  sum  not  exceeding  that  amount  as  might  be 
necessary  to  provide  these  scholarships.  Notice  of  this  offer  was 
sent  to  all  the  superintendents  and  principals  of  the  public 
schools  to  the  State  Labor  Department,  charitable  societies, 
truant  officers,  settlement  workers  and  social  agencies  generally. 

As  the  result  of  that  experiment,  490  applications  for  scholar- 
ships were  received  from  October  i,  1905,  to  December  15, 
1906,  Of  these,  160  have  been  referred  elsewhere,  because  the 
diildren  were  not  of  the  age  at  which  they  could  have  been 


28  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

employed  previously,  that  is  to  say,  they  were  over  fourteen,  or 
were  under  twelve,  and  were  not  within  the  provisions  of  the 
recently  enacted  law.  Of  the  remaining  330  applications  coming 
within  the  age  limits,  95  scholarships  have  been  granted,  that 
is  a  little  less  than  30  per  cent.  Bear  in  mind  that  these  figures 
relate  to  the  entire  City  of  New  York,  with  its  population  in 
round  numbers  of  4,250,000  of  people,  and  that  with  all  the 
publicity  attached  to  this  offer,  and  in  the  space  of  nearly  fifteen 
months,  only  95  cases  have  been  found  in  which  these  scholar- 
^ips   should  be  given. 

These  scholarships  are  adjusted  to  the  probable  amount  of 
the  child's  earnings,  ranging  from  $1  to  $3  per  week,  and  the 
total  present  outlay  per  month  is  at  the  rate  of  $5,000  per  year, 
that  is  to  say,  it  is  about  $100  per  week.  It  seems  possible 
tlhat  in  the  course  of  another  year  there  may  be  some  further 
increase,  although  the  number  is  very  nearly  stationary  at 
present.  It  seems  to  be  well  within  the  mark  to  say  that  $10,- 
000  at  the  very  most  will  meet  all  the  deficiencies  that  arise 
from  the  discontinuance  of  the  employment  of  children  by  the 
new  law,  in  so  far  as  such  income  is  a  necessary  part  of  the 
living  expenses  of  the  families.  Here,  as  in  nearly  all  the  other 
cities  reporting,  the  scholarship  continues  until  the  child  reaches 
the  age  of  legal  employment,  unless  the  need  therefor  ceases  at 
an  earlier  date. 

I  have  been  struck,  in  examining  the  reports  which  have 
been  received  by  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee  from 
each  of  the  larger  cities  of  the  country,  on  this  question,  to  find 
the  very  different  conditions  that  seem  to  exist  in  different 
cities.  In  Chicago,  for  instance,  where  a  similar  plan  has  been  in 
operation  under  the  joint  auspices  of  the  Consumers'  League 
and  the  Bureau  of  Charities,  the  total  number  of  scholarships 
awarded  during  a  period  of  three  years  is  but  fifteen.  Only 
a  small  percentage  of  those  who  filed  applications  for  scholar- 
ships are  found  to  be  actually  in  need.  The  scholarships  are 
largely  provided  by  the  women's  clubs,  though  the  investiga- 
tions of  the  families  and  their  oversight  is  in  the  hands  of  the 
Bureau  of  Charities.     The  scholarship  is  usually  $3  per  week. 


CHILD  LABOR  29 

In  Philadelphia,  the  Public  Education  Association  and  Child 
Labor  Committee  have  established  the  same  plan,  and  there 
during  the  year  ending  June  30,  1906,  the  number  of  scholarships 
granted  has  been  twenty-eight — about  one-fifth  of  the  total 
number  of  applicants.  There  also  the  investigation  of  the 
family  is  by  the  Charity  Organization  Society.  The  scholar- 
ships, ranging  in  amount  from  75  cents  to  $4  per  week,  are 
adjusted,  not  on  the  basis  of  the  probable  earnings  of  the  child 
if  employed,  but  on  the  actual  need  of  the  family. 

In  St.  Louis  there  is  a  compulsory  school  attendance  law 
from  which  children  may  be  excused,  lawfully,  on  the  ground 
of  extreme  proverty.  The  cases  that  have  been  so  excused 
were  inquired  into  recently  as  to  the  merits  of  the  excuse,  and 
it  is  reported  (July,  1906)  that  so  far  as  the  investigation  had 
gone  it  indicated  that  not  more  than  fifty  full  term  exemptions 
were  granted  during  the  past  year,  and  judging  by  the  results 
so  far  secured  about  twenty  of  these  would  prove  to  be  cases 
calling  for  material  assistance  if  the  children  attended  school, 
and  that  the  total  expenditure  for  such  aid  would  probably  be 
covered  by  the  sum  of  $1,000  per  year.  The  Secretary  of  the 
Missouri  Child  Labor  Committee  reports:  "In  the  case  of 
parents  claiming  permanent  or  long-term  exemptions  in  order 
that  their  children  might  work  in  stores  or  factories,  a  success- 
ful eflfort  is  being  made  this  year  in  St.  Louis  to  eliminate  all 
such  child  labor  by  providing  scholarships  for  children  rec- 
ommended for  exemption  by  the  truant  officer.  The  chairman 
of  the  executive  committee  of  the  Children's  Protective  Alliance, 
Mr.  W.  O.  Nelson,  has  proposed  to  the  women's  clubs  of  the 
city  to  share  equally  with  them  the  expense  of  such  scholar- 
ships; and  pending  action  by  the  women's  clubs,  Mr.  Nelson 
is  personally  providing  for  all  these  cases,  after  they  have  been 
reported  on  by  the  truant  officer  and  carefully  investigated  by 
the  agents  of  the  St.  Louis  Provident  Association.  The  cases,  of 
course,  accumulate  gradually  through  the  year  as  the  truant 
officers  continue  their  work,  so  that  it  is  impossible  to  say  at 
this  date  how  many  will  present  themselves  per  annum.  I  have 
not  Mr.   Nelson's  authority  to  say  what  the  expense  involved 


30  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

has  thus  far  been.  But  a  rough  preliminary  investigation  of 
last  year's  long-term  exemption  cases  indicated  that  the  number 
of  children  properly  entitled  to  scholarships  would  certainly 
not  exceed  fifty,  and  would  probably  be  less  than  thirty.  Some- 
thing over  a  third  of  the  cases  approved  for  exemption  by 
the  attendance  office  are  rejected  after  the  Provident  Associa- 
tion's  investigation." 

In  Pittsburg,  during  the  year  ending  June  30,  1906,  the 
number  of  scholarships  granted  was  three,  the  amount  being  $2 
per  week  in  each  case. 

The  reply  from  Boston  is,  to  my  mind,  very  significant.  I 
will  quote  one  or  two  sentences:  "Child  labor  has  not  been 
an  issue  in  Massachusetts  for  many  years.  In  the  statutes  of 
1880  practically  no  employment  of  children  under  fourteen  was 
permitted  in  school  hours.  There  has  been,  therefore,  in  those 
who  are  dependents,  no  new  problem  to  meet  by  keeping  the 
children  in  school  until  fourteen,  and  there  are  no  special 
scholarship  funds  or  societies  for  such  children.  .  .  .  The  public 
outdoor  relief,  and  the  private  charitable  societies  have  always 
worked  with  the  enforcement  of  the  child  labor  law  in  mind." 
That  is  to  say,  the  standards  of  relief,  both  on  the  part  of  the 
public  authorities  and  of  the  private  societies,  have  been  such  as 
contemplate  a  full  enforcement  of  the  child  labor  law;  so  that 
instead  of  receiving  aid  in  the  form  of  scholarships  from  some 
newly-established  agency,  the  parents  in  case  of  need  receive 
the  aid  in  the  form  of  relief  either  from  the  public  officers  or 
from  private  societies.  That  appears  to  be  the  state  of  affairs 
in  a  number  of  other  cities.  In  Buffalo  for  instance,  we  find 
that  the  health  department  sometimes  refers  families  to  the 
Charity  Organization  Society,  where  the  operation  of  the  law 
would  otherwise  seem  likely  to  work  hardship.  The  families  re- 
ceive relief  on  the  usual  plans,  but  without  any  system  of 
scholarship. 

In  Minneapolis,  the  Associated  Charities  have  adopted  the 
scholarship  plan,  and  during  the  year  ending  June  30,  1906,  ten 
full  scholarships  were  granted,  and  in  some  thirty  other  cases 
partial   relief  was  given — a  comparatively   large  number  for  a 


CHILD  LABOR  31 

city  of  that  size,  as  compared  with  other  cities.  About  10  per 
cent  of  the  applications  were  approved  for  some  form  of  aid. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  in  most  of  the  cities,  but  not  in  New 
York,  the  amount  of  the  scholarship  is  not  based  on  the 
probable  earnings  of  the  child  were  he  employed,  but  on  the 
actual  need  of  the  family,  aiming  to  make  up  the  full  amount 
that  the  family  requires  in  order  to  live  in  accord  with  reason- 
able standards. 

The  Associated  Charities  in  Kansas  City  reports  that,  while 
the  scholarship  idea  as  such  has  not  been  developed  there,  that 
society  assists,  from  private  sources,  widows  with  children,  so 
that  the  children  may  attend  the  public  schools  and-  need 
not  be  employed. 

Such  also  is  the  report  from  Indianapolis,  with  the  further 
statement  that  when  the  recent  truancy  and  factory  laws  were 
passed  it  was  expected  that  there  would  be  a  large  increase  in 
the  demand  upon  the  funds  of  that  society  for  aiding  widows, 
but  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  was  but  very  little  increase  of 
that    character. 

In  the  City  of  Baltimore,  the  law  has  recently  taken  effect, 
and  a  plan  has  been  adopted  by  which  the  bureau  of  labor  and 
statistics  refers  to  the  Charity  Organization  Society  all  cases 
of  apparent  hardship,  most  of  which,  thus  far,  upon  investiga- 
tion, have  been  found  not  to  be  cases  of  actual  need. 

From  Milwaukee,  we  have  the  report  that  there  are  no  schol- 
arships, but  that  the  county  superintendent  of  the  poor  extends 
additional  relief  to  certain  families  when  it  would  otherwise  be 
a  hardship  to  require  the  child  to  attend  school.  There  are 
several  such  cases,  and  the  plan  is  resulting  in  better  attendance 
in  the  public  schools. 

The  examination  of  these  reports,  with  a  study  of  the  letters 
accompanying  them,  has  suggested  to  me  several  conclusions, 
and  especially  this  one — and  I  speak  for  myself  only,  and  not 
as  representing  the  views  of  the  National  Child  Labor  Commit- 
tee, having  had  no  opportunity  for  conference  with  them  on  this 
subject — that  this  is  at  botton  essentially  a  phase  of  the  relief 
problem;  that  it  is  not  primarily  an  educational  problem  or  a 


32  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

problem  of  enforcement  of  law,  but  is  ^  relief  problem;  and  that 
all  moneys  given  out  in  the  form  of  scholarships,  and  under 
these  circumstances,  should  be  given  with  the  same  care  and 
with  the  same  adequacy  and  upon  the  same  principles  as  govern 
the  best  relief  work. 

It  is  not  an  exceptional  thing  to  find  that  there  are  new 
demands  upon  relief-giving  societies,  and  that  the  standards 
heretofore  deemed  adequate  are  no  longer  adequate.  It  is 
frequently  necessary  for  such  agencies  and  for  such  public  offi- 
cials to  revise  their  judgments  as  to  what  constitutes  adequate 
relief,  and  this  is,  after  all,  the  fundamental  thing  in  all  charit- 
able work.  We  may  have  been  in  error  sometimes  in-  the  past, 
and  have  been  superficially  satisfied  in  entering  upon  the  rec- 
ord of  a  family  that  it  is  "self-supporting"  without  looking  far 
enough  ahead,  and  without  considering  whether  the  family 
is  self-supporting  with  full  justice  to  its  future,  as  well  as  to 
its  present.  It  is  quite  possible  that  the  family  may  be  self- 
supporting  now,  but  in  such  a  manner  as  to  insure  the  fact 
that  in  a  very  few  years  it  cannot  possibly  be  self-supporting. 
The  incipient  consumptive  can  remain  at  work  and  support 
his  family  for  a  considerable  time,  but  with  the  certain  result 
that  at  the  end  of  a  short  time  we  will  have  upon  our  hands 
a  widow  and  a  family  of*  children.  We  have  revised  our  stand- 
ards of  relief-giving  in  view  of  our  most  recent  knowledge  of 
the  treatment  of  tuberculosis.  Similarly  a  widow  can  go  out 
to  work  by  the  day  for  six  days  in  the  week,  and  thus  be 
"self-supporting"  and  maintain  her  family,  but  with  the  cer- 
tain result  that  in  a  comparatively  short  time  her  health  must 
give  way  and  we  shall  have  upon  our  hands  for  an  indefinite 
time  a  woman  broken  in  health  and  a  family  of  children.  Un- 
der these  circumstances,  the  families  are  not  self-supporting 
in  any  proper  sense  of  the  term.  Our  conception  of  the  amount 
and  character  of  the  relief  that  should  be  given  must  be  ex- 
tended and  extended  and  again  extended;  and  it  is  a  similar 
step  that  we  must  take  in  applying  our  relief  system  to  families 
in  which  there  are  children  who  would  be  employed  except  for 
our  child   labor  laws. 

While  all  this  is  true,  and  while  in  my  opinion  the   schol- 


CHILD  LABOR  33 

arship  is  a  passing  phase  of  the  relief  problem,  it  has  many 
tactical  and  temporary  advantages.  Charity  has  come  to  be 
something  of  a  yellow  dog.  No  one  likes  to  receive  charity; 
few  persons  particularly  care  to  be  engaged  in  dispensing  re- 
lief. Institutions  supported  by  charitable  gifts  always  prefer  to 
be  known  under  some  other  heading.  It  may  be  well,  there- 
fore, not  to  raise  that  question  for  the  moment  and  to  disguise 
the  relief  under  some  pleasanter  name.  Furthermore,  of  course, 
those  who  are  instrumental  in  securing  child  labor  legislation 
feel,  and  very  properly  so,  a  certain  moral  responsibility  for 
seeing  that  hardship  does  not  result,  even  in  a  small  degree, 
from  the 'proposed  legislation.  Therefore,  it  is  entirely  proper 
and  justifiable — it  is  in  some  ways  desirable — that  they  should 
be  able  to  say  to  the  community  and  to  the  legislators  and  to 
the  public  authorities  that  they  know  of  their  positive  knowl- 
edge that  the  families  deprived  of  the  earnings  of  their  chil- 
dren are  not  suffering;  and  that  as  an  evidence  of  good  faith 
they,  from  funds  collected  themselves,  have  met  the  need. 

There  are  perhaps  many  communities  in  which  relief  work 
is  not  suflficiently  well  informed  and  organized,  or  is  not  suffi- 
ciently strong  to  meet  this  situation,  and  until  they  can  be  im- 
proved— until  the  relief  agencies,  public  and  private,  can  be 
educated  and  strengthened,  and  induced  to  adopt  the  larger 
view,  it  may  be  wiser  and,  in  fact,  may  be  highly  important, 
that  some  temporary  provision  of  scholarships  be  made. 

The  important  thing,  however,  from  the  point  of  view  of- 
the  National  Child  Labor  Committee,  is  this,  that  the  experi- 
ence of  the  past  four  years  has  given  us  the  measure  of  the  prob- 
lem. It  has  demonstrated  the  soundness  of  our  earlier  posi- 
tion; that  the  number  of  such  families  needing  relief  is  small; 
that  funds  would  be  forthcoming  to  meet  this  need;  that  the 
problem  is  an  easily  managed  one;  and  that  poverty  and  paren- 
tal dependence  should  not  be  an  obstacle  to  progressive  child 
labor  legislation. 


34  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:  19-25.  January,  1907. 

Some  of  the  Ultimate  Physical  Effects  of  Premature  Toil. 
Albert   H,    Freiberg. 

It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  it  is  as  yet  not  possible  to 
present  to  this  committee  a  comprehensive  report  upon  the 
physical  effects  of  premature  toil,  based  upon  a  thorough  and 
scientific  investigation.  Many  persons  express  surprise  at  learn- 
ing that  up  to  this  time  no  such  study  has  been  made.  In  the 
course  of  a  recent  effort  to  improve  the  child  labor  law  of  this 
state,  a  discussion  developed  between  the  committee  and  a 
group  of  manufacturers  objecting  to  certain  of  its  provisions, 
the  committee  seeking  to  show  that  ten  hours  of  work  daily 
must  be  considered  injurious  to  the  organism  of  boys  between 
the  ages  of  fourteen  and  sixteen,  even  though  the  employment 
involved  no  great  muscular  exertion.  We  were  met  with  the 
request  to  furnish  reliable  evidence  that  this  is  the  case;  evi- 
dence which  we  were  unable  to  produce,  even  though  we  were 
perfectly  sure  in  our  own  minds  of  the  truth  of  our  statement. 
It  is  apparent  that  the  value  of  such  evidence  would  be  exceed- 
ingly great  in  the  efforts  to  secure  for  the  growing  child  its 
natural  rights;  of  which  eft'orts  this  meeting  is  so  vigorous  an 
expression. 

Unless  one  has  devoted  some  thought  to  the  subject,  it  might 
appear  to  be  a  task  of  no  great  difficulty  or  magnitude  to  collect 
the  data  incident  to  such  an  investigation.  However,  the  re- 
verse is  true,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  following  requirements, 
which  are  none  too  severe  if  reliable  information  is  to  be  ob- 
tained. 

It  should  be  required: 

(o)  That  the  investigation  comprehend  a  large  number  of 
children  in  each  of  the  groups  to  be  mentioned. 

(b)  That  the  measurements  be  made  by  those  familiar  with 
such  work,  in  order  that  they  may  be  trustworthy;  and  by 
persons  competent  to  detect  physical  abnormities  even  in  their 
beginnings. 

(r)  That  a  sufficient  number  of  measurements  be  taken  of 


CHILD  LABOR  35 

each  child  so  as  to  insure  a  convincing  record  of  its  physical 
condition. 

(d)  That  the  children  be  examined  upon  beginning  their 
factory  life  and  at  certain  intervals  until  the  termination  of 
adolescence. 

(e)  That  comparative  investigation  be  made  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  children  of  the  same  types  who  have  not  been  engaged 
in  gainful  occupations  during  the  most  active  period  of  adoles- 
cence. 

The  value  of  such  an  investigation  may  well  be  considered 
inestimable.  It  would  determine  beyond  doubt  whether  the 
charge  of  physical  deterioration  from  premature  toil  is  a  just 
one  or  not  and  would  fix  definitely  the  responsibility  of  the 
state  in  the  protection  of  its  future  citizens  and  mothers.  We 
feel  sufficiently  sure  of  the  result  of  such  an  investigation, 
made  with  skill  and  impartiality,  as  to  court  it  most  ardently. 
Upon  thoughtful  consideration  it  must,  however,  appear  that  the 
means  and  power  necessary  for  the  execution  of  so  compre- 
hensive a  program  cannot  be  within  the  reach  of  a  private  as- 
sociation. This  should  be  a  function  of  government,  and  the 
need  for  it  might  well  be  looked  upon  as  one  of  the  most 
important  arguments  for  the  establishment  of  a  Children's  Bu- 
reau at  Washington. 

In  the  absence  of  data  dealing  with  the  investigation  of 
large  numbers  of  toiling  children  and  based  upon  a  systematic 
plan  of  observation  and  record,  it  may  nevertheless  be  of  in- 
terest to  call  attention  to  certain  effects  of  a  purely  physical 
character  which  professional  experience  has  for  years  been 
accustomed  to  look  upon  as  the  results  of  environment  and 
occupation,  and  especially  when  considered  with  reference  to 
the  physical  peculiarities  of  the  child  between  the  ages  of  ten 
and  sixteen  years.  In  doing  this,  effort  will  be  made  to  avoid 
that  which  is  purely  technical,  but  also  that  which  is  in  any 
way  still  a  matter  of  supposition  rather  than  observation,  and 
therefore  not  generally  accepted. 

The  role  of  the  play  hours  in  the  development  of  the  young 
child,  his  innate  desire  for  physical  activity  and  especially  in 
the   open,   are    well   recognized   by   all   laymen,   and   there   are 


36  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

few  indeed  who  will  not  acknowledge  how  important  these  are 
in  promoting  the  formative  processes  which  are  at  this  time  of 
life  actively  going  on.  The  statement  that  this  natural  desire  for 
movement  and  exercise  cannot  be  balked  in  the  child  eight  to 
ten  years  of  age,  without  damage  to  his  physical  progress,  will 
meet  with  little  protest,  and  for  the  present  discussion  this  is  of 
minor  importance,  since,  by  far  the  greater  number  of  children 
at  work  have  at  least  passed  their  tenth  year,  and  since  no 
state,  whose  statutes  do  not  ignore  the  question  altogether, 
has  ventured  to  place  the  limit  for  work  below  this.  When 
the  child  arrives  at  its  twelfth  year,  however,  it  enters 
a  period  which,  lasting  until  its  seventeenth  year  as  a  rule,  is 
characterized  not  only  by  those  changes  of  disposition,  of  mind 
and  soul,  of  body  and  appearance,  embraced  by  the  term 
"puberty,"  but  a  period  also  during  which  the  body  experiences 
its  most  rapid  growth  in  length.  As  the  bones  grow  longer,  at 
this  rapid  rate,  the  muscles  controlling  these  bones  must  grow 
longer  with  them.  The  muscles  must,  however,  increase  not 
only  in  length  but  in  volume  if  their  strength  is  to  be  propor- 
tionate to  the  ever-increasing  demands  made  upon  them.  That 
this  increase  of  volume,  therefore,  of  strength,  is  dependent 
upon  exercise,  is  common  knowledge;  that  lack  of  use  causes 
wasting  and  therefore  weakening  of  muscle  is  no  less  so.  It 
is  likewise  well  known  that  excessive  exercise  of  certain  mus- 
cles will  result  not  in  increase  of  strength  but  in  degeneration 
and  weakening,  and  that  there  is  no  surer  way  of  inducing 
great  fatigue  than  by  using  the  same  set  of  muscles  for  a  long 
time  without  change,  thus  giving  no  opportunity  for  what  is 
called  rest  but  what  is  really  the  replenishing  of  muscle  ma- 
terial which  has  been  consumed.  Let  us  now  apply  these  state- 
ments in  practice;  to  the  case  of  a  girl  feeding  material  to  a 
machine  and  sitting  in  one  position  for  hours  at  a  time;  to  the 
case  of  a  boy  handling  small  articles  of  manufacture,  having 
perhaps  nothing  more  to  do  than  to  remove  them  from  one  ma- 
chine to  another  close  by,  or  to  perform,  in  the  standing  posi- 
tion, a  set  of  movements  with  rapidity  but  involving  no  test  of 
strength  whatever.  Such  work  commonly  develops  quickness 
of  eye  and  dexterity  of  fingers.     It  is  certainly  not  looked  up- 


CHILD  LABOR  Z7 

on  as  involving  physical  strain  of  any  account.  Here  lies  the 
fallacy;  standing  and  sitting  are  looked  upon  as  passive  and 
involving  no  great  muscular  action.  If  this  were  true,  why 
should  we  then  tire  so  much  more  easily  from  standing  than 
from  walking,  since  this  apparently  requires  much  more  use  of 
the  muscles;  why  so  much  more  easily  from  holding  a  weight 
continuously  in  one  position  than  from  moving  it  in  various 
directions. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  standing  and  sitting  are  possible  only 
by  active  muscular  work,  and,  when  prolonged,  have  connected 
with  them  the  disadvantage  of  permitting  but  little  change  of 
activity  to  other  muscles.  It  cannot  be  surprising  to  learn, 
therefore,  that  under  these  circumstances  the  tissues  yield  under 
unrelieved  strain;  that  the  leg  and  trunk  muscles  become  ex- 
cessively fatigued  and  thus  compel  the  assumption,  for  relief, 
of  faulty  postures  and  attitudes  which  can  at  first  be  voluntar- 
ily departed  from,  but  which  finally  take  the  place  of  the  nor- 
mal and  leave  the  child  more  or  less  permanently  deformed. 
Thus  it  is  that,  even  before  the  advent  of  modern  factory  em- 
ployment, certain  deformities  were  recognized  as  being  associ- 
ated with  certain  occupations;  the  expression  "baker's  legs," 
for  example,  will  be  found  in  surgical  treatises  written  many 
years  ago.  The  argument  that  the  labor  performed  by  the  child 
is  not  hard  is  therefore  only  a  specious  one.  Keeping  a  grow- 
ing individual  at  an  occupation,  for  ten  hours  daily,  which  in- 
volves the  use  of  only  a  limited  set  of  muscles,  when  he  is  at  an 
age  when  nature  prompts  running  and  jumping,  deprives  him 
of  the  need  for  deep  breathing,  and  therefore  expansion  of  the 
chest,  which  these  bring  with  them,  and  of  the  stimulus  to  the 
blood  circulation  which,  although  often  harmful  to  the  man 
past  middle  age,  is  of  the  greatest  value  to  the  developing  or- 
ganism. 

However  desirable  it  may  be  to  preserve  the  normal  form 
and  symmetry  of  the  human  body,  that  it  may  be  agreeable  to 
look  upon,  there  is  underlying  this  a  factor  of  greater  import 
to  humanity  than  mere  personal  vanity.  This  is  the  economic 
factor  which  takes  into  account  the  future  of  the  individual, 
after  the   period   of   immaturity  has   passed   and   the   child   has 


38  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

become  the  citizen  and  has  assumed  the  responsilibities  of 
parentage.  Whatever  can  be  shown  to  now  permanently  im- 
pair wage-earning  capacity  or  to  interfere  with  the  performance 
of  family  duties,  or  indeed  to  shorten  the  tenure  of  life,  will  be 
acknowledged  by  all  to  be  of  prime  importance.  I  shall  not 
refer  to  such  conditions  as  general  weakness  or  diminished 
chest  capacity  and  the  tendency  to  acquire  disease  in  conse- 
quence thereof,  but  rather  to  certain  definite  deformities  which 
I  have  had  frequent  opportunity  for  observing,  both  in  process 
of  formation  and  in  their  final   results. 

For  the  present,  the  various  occupations  of  toiling  chil- 
dren may  be  grouped  according  as  the  work  is  done  in  stand- 
ing or  sitting  position.  In  general,  and  there  are  of  course 
many  exceptions,  boy's  work  requires  standing  and  girl's  work 
sitting.  It  may  also  be  said,  in  the  same  general  way,  that 
the  work  which  the  boy  does  standing  is  an  apprenticeship  for 
work  which  the  man  also  does,  as  a  journeyman,  in  the  stand- 
ing position.  This  is  correspondingly  true  of  girl's  work. 
Standing  occupations  naturally  involve  the  feet  and  legs  in 
greatest  strain,  and  more  especially  the  feet.  In  consequence 
we  see  developing,  during  the  adolescent  years,  that  condition 
known  as  weak  and  flat  foot.  This  frequently  occurs  in  the 
adult  also  from  causes  of  similar  nature,  but  only  too  frequently 
the  result  of  conditions  and  weakening  which  must  be  attrib- 
uted to  the  period  of  active  growth.  The  deformity  acquired 
in  adult  years,  though  it  may  be  disabling  and  painful  in  high 
degree,  but  rarely  assumes  the  severe  form  so  frequently  seen 
in  the  later  period  of  adolescence  as  a  sad  testimony  of  the 
child's  experience.  Commonly,  the  foot  loses  its  strength  and 
shape  gradually,  so  that,  at  this  time,  but  little  notice  is  taken 
of  it.  Later,  when  the  child  has  become  the  father,  and  the 
necessity  for  continuous  employment  is  apparent,  the  feet  only 
too  frequently  become  so  painful  that  long  absention  from 
work  is  imperative,  and  it  happens  not  rarely  that  an  entire 
change  of  employment  cannot  be  avoided ;  thus  are  lost  the 
skill  and  aptitude  acquired  during  the  period  of  prematurity; 
for  while  medical  science  can  do  much  for  these  unfortunates, 
they    are    often    debarred    from    continuing    in    trades    requiring 


CHILD  LABOR  39 

constant  standing.  Frequently  upon  coming  under  medical 
care  the  condition  is  such  that  nothing  short  of  a  long  stay 
in  hospital  will  prove  availing,  and  this  means  loss  of  income 
if  not  loss  of  independence  for  a  greater  or  less  period.  I 
doubt  whether  it  is  generally  realized  how  frequently  such  con- 
ditions are  met  as  those  to  which  I  have  just  referred.  While 
originally  uttered  in  a  somewhat  different  sense,  the  saying  seems 
here  most  appropriate  that  "the  boy  without  play  is  the  father 
^withouta_job.''  When  the  one  weekly  holiday  comes,  the  ac- 
cumulated fatigue  of  the  week's  standing  is  apt  to  be  so  great 
that  only  the  exceptionally  robust  have  the  desire  for  outdoor 
exercise  left  in  them.  The  day  is  therefore  only  too  often  used 
for  repose  of  the  body,  which,  while  furnishing  relief  to  the  ex- 
cessively fatigued  muscles,  does  nothing  for  the  remainder  of 
the  organism,  which  would  otherwise  invite  active  movement  in 
the  open  air. 

Turning  now  to  the  girl  in  the  sitting  occupation,  I  would 
attract  your  attention  to  the  frequent  occurrence  of  curvature  of 
the  spine,  spoken  of  as  "lateral  curvature."  This  deformity  is 
often  seen  in  school  children  and  even  in  those  leading  luxuri- 
ous lives.  It  betokens  a  weakness  of  fiber  and  a  need  for  phys- 
ical culture,  which  is,  however,  to  be  controlled  by  proper 
treatment.  When  this  is  within  reach,  the  progress  of  the  de- 
formity is  checked  so  that  it  does  not  become  a  menace  to 
health,  and  it  is  objectionable  chiefly  as  constituting  an  esthetic 
defect  which  the  skilful  dressmaker  is  usually  able  to  conceal. 

Were  this,  however,  the  extent  of  the  damage  done  to  the 
organism  by  lateral  curvature,  I  should  have  nothing  to  say  of 
it  in  this  place.  It  becomes  of  importance  in  this  connection, 
however,  because  it  is  so  frequently  seen  in  girls  who  have  been 
engaged  in  sitting  occupations  during  the  developmental  period 
and  because  in  them  it  assumes  not  only  the  role  of  a  deform- 
ity of  most  severe  type,  not  simply  a  most  unfortunate  dis- 
figurement, but  also  because  it  now  constitutes  a  very  serious 
menace  to  health  and  the  attainment  of  longevity  of  even  aver- 
age degree.  I  shall  not  discuss  the  deformity  in  detail  except 
to  say  that  when  assuming  the  severe  grades  under  discussion, 
its  effects   reach  far  beyond  the   spine  itself,  which  bends  not 


40  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

simply  to  one  side  or  the  other,  but  is  always  markedly  twist- 
ed on  its  vertical  axis  also.  In  this  twist  the  chest  partici- 
pates fully,  so  that  not  only  is  its  power  of  expansion  greatly 
interfered  with,  but  its  capacity  is  reduced  and  much  crowd- 
ing and  displacement  of  the  vital  organs  contained  within  can 
be  determined.  Small  wonder,  then,  that  such  severe  degree 
of  lateral  curvature  adds  greatly  to  the  likelihood  of  develop- 
ing pulmonary  consumption  and  that  the  heart  cannot  be 
thus  be  pushed  aside  with  impunity.  It  has  been  ascertained 
that,  for  these  reasons,  the  duration  of  life  of  individuals 
with  severe  lateral  curvatures  is  far  below  the  average.  The 
remoter  effect  of  the  deformity  upon  the  pelvis  of  the  girl 
I  need  only  mention  to  the  extent  of  saying  that  here,  too, 
a  distortion  and  diminution  of  normal  capacity  frequently  re- 
sults, so  that  this  'has  always  been  recognized  by  medical  men 
as  of  potentially  serious  influence  upon  the  maternal  function. 
In  conclusion  it  is  to  be  said  that  these  deformities  are  by 
no  means  confined  exclusively  to  one  sex  or  the  other; 
neither  is  it  to  be  interpreted  that  they  occur  in  every  child 
who  works,  or  even  in  the  greater  number.  It  is  asserted, 
however,  that  these  deformities  in  the  severe  forms  before  re- 
ferred to  are  particularly  frequent  among  toiling  children, 
or  those  who  have  toiled  as  children.  That  the  unfavorable 
influences  of  premature  toil  are  only  too  often  augmented 
by  unfortunate  home  influences,  by  dwellings  that  are  unfit, 
by  insufficient  and  improper  food,  does  not  alter  the  case. 
I  have  aimed  to  speak  of  these  deformities  in  particular,  be- 
cause of  their  serious  nature  and  because  I  have  abundant 
opportunity  for  observing  them.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not 
to  be  overlooked  that  these  are  by  no  means  "the  only,  or  even 
the  most  common,  evidences  of  physical  deterioration  to  be 
observed  among  working   children. 

Annals   of   the  Americcin   Academy.  33:    Sup.   49-62. 

March,   1909. 

Unsettled    Questions    about    Child    Labor.    Owen    R.    Lovejoy. 

It   is    the    purpose    of   this    paper   to    review    a    few    of   the 

typical  questions  that  have  not  been  solved,  as  an  introduction 


CHILD  LABOR  41 

to  the  discussions  that  are  to  follow.  Perhaps  the  questions 
requiring  most  immediate  attention  may  be  divided  for  con- 
venience as  follows: — 

(i)  What  classes  of  children  should  be  entirely  eliminated 
as  a  factor  in  the  industrial  problem? 

(2)  From  what  industries  should  all  children  be  eliminated? 

(3)  What  regulations  should  govern  the  conditions  of 
the  children  who  may  wisely  be  employed? 

(4)  What  is  to  be  done  with  those  excluded  from  in- 
dustry? 

/.  What  Children  to  be  Eliminated 
Obviously  there  is  a  period  in  the  life  of  the  child  which, 
both  for  the  good  of  the  child  and  for  the  good  of  society, 
must  be.  kept  free  from  exacting  toil  or  burdensome  responsi- 
bility. How  shall  the  end  of  that  period  be  marked?  The 
method  thus  far  applied  has  been  through  the  establishment 
of  a  minimum  age  limit.  That  age  limit  has  advanced  steadi- 
ly from  eight  and  nine  years  until  to-day  it  is  generally  agreed 
that,  in  this  country,  no  child  under  fourteen  years  can  wise- 
ly be  subjected  to  wage-earning  labor. 

Not  that  all  our  states  have  advanced  to  this  standard, 
tor  South  Carolina,  Alabama,  Maryland,  Florida,  Georgia, 
Mississippi,  Texas,  and  West  Virginia  permit  children  of 
twelve  years  to  be  legally  employed,  and  North  Carolina  fixes 
thirteen  years  as  the  limit.  Furthermore,  in  a  number  of  these 
states  if  a  child  is  poor  or  otherwise  handicapped  he  is 
turned  at  even  an  earlier  age  to  the  hard  battle  for  life.  But 
the  interested  citizens  in  those  parts  of  the  country  make 
an  apology  for  permitting  this  early  exploitation  of  the  child, 
and  are  seekng  to  raise  their  commonwealths  to  the  higher 
standard.  This  fourteen-year  limit,  however,  does  not  express 
the  standard  agreed  upon.  Beyond  this  the  prevailing  demand 
requires  that  the  fourteen-year-old  child  shall  meet  certain  edu- 
cational and  physical  tests  before  being  subjected  to  indus- 
trial competition.  In  Colorado,  Michigan,  Nebraska,  Vermont, 
and  Wisconsin  he  must  pass  at  least  the  eighth  grade  before 
being  released  under  sixteen  from  school,  and  in   New  Jersey 


42  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

he  must  pass  all  the  grammar  grades,  and  his  fifteenth  birth- 
day before  he  can  be  excused  from  school.  In  New  York, 
Ohio  and  Montana  he  is  required  to  pass  the  eighth  grade. 

In  a  number  of  states  efforts  are  being  made  to  add  care- 
ful physical  tests,  to  be  made  frequently  during  the  school 
course  and  upon  entering  industry.  Especial  emphasis  is 
at  present  being  put  on  the  physical  qualifications  of  the 
working  child.  Manifestly  the  under-developed  child,  the  child 
lacking  in  sight,  hearing,  lung  development,  muscular  growth, 
bone  formation,  or  heart  action  should  not  be  abandoned  by 
the  state  to  the  rigors  of  an  industrial  life  merely  because 
he  has  reached  the  age  of  fourteen  years.  There  are  those 
who  take  the  position  that  the  age  test  should  be  abandoned 
and  there  should  be  substituted  educational  and  physical  quali- 
fications. One  of  the  papers  at  this  Conference  will  seek  to 
show  the  possibilities  of  making  anatomical  and  physiological 
tests,  by  which  the  development  of  the  child  can  be  gauged 
with  scientific  accuracy,  and  thus  the  actual  physical  age  be 
recorded.  The  difficulty  of  applying  this  method  in  small 
communities  and  in  parts  of  the  country  devoid  of  skillful 
medical  practitioners  will  at  once  appear.  It  would  seem  that 
the  medical  profession  should  everywhere  be  counted  on  to 
give  the  child  that  meed  of  protection  which  is  due.  Yet 
is  is  notorious  that  in  many  cities  the  local  boards  of  health 
perform  in  a  merely  perfunctory  manner,  or  entirely  neglect 
to  perform  their  duties  in  relation  to  the  certification  of  chil- 
dren seeking  employment. 

Despite  these  objections  we  welcome  this  proffered  aid 
to  the  solution  of  one  of  the  most  perplexing  phases  in  this 
problem.  And  we  believe  the  movement  among  physicians 
marks  the  beginning  of  a  more  rational  and  scientific  treat- 
ment of  the  whole  subject.  Such  tests  would,  from  the  out- 
set, have  immense  educational  value.  Let  the  people  be  con- 
vinced that  the  child  is  not  a  little  man  or  woman,  but  a  being 
in  the  process  of  physical  formation — with  features  of  that  de- 
velopment so  delicate  that  no  less  caution  is  required  at  the 
age   of   ten    or   twelve    years    than    was    required    in    infancy — 


CHILD  LABOR  43 

and  a  speedy  end  will  be  reached  of  all  the  popular  fallacies 
about  the  benefits  of  hard  and  exacting  labor  in  the  training 
of  the  little  child.  Such  tests  as  are  foretokened  in  these  ex- 
periments present  an  encouraging  prospect.  Meanwhile  there 
will  be  a  period  of  experimentation  and  civil  war  among  the 
experts.  During  the  period  if  we  must  continue  to  "fumble" 
we  must  insist  that,  while  we  work  by  confessedly  unscientific 
methods,  the   child  shall  be  given  the  benefit  of  the  doubt. 

For  the  encouragement  of  those  who  have  fought  to  es- 
tablish the  laws  that  now  protect  the  children  in  many  states 
it  may  be  noted  that  thus  far  the  findings  of  the  physicians 
and  anatomists  tend  to  justify  the  rough  line  of  demarcation 
that  has  been  drawn  at  fourteen  years  and  to  urge  the  adop- 
tion of  still  higher  restrictions.  Upon  this  point,  then,  we 
are  clear  in  our  duty  to  attack  every  part  of  the  country 
which  compels  younger  children  to  be  wage  earners. 

At  a  recent  child-labor  conference  in  Connecticut  a  leading 
manufacturer  of  New  England  frankly  proposed  a  sixteen-year 
limit  for  all  children  in  wage-earning  industries.  This  gratify- 
ing proposition  is  meeting  with  popular  favor.  The  governor  of 
Connecticut  has  advocated  this  in  his  message  to  the  legislature, 
and  a  bill  may  be  presented  to  thus  amend  the  law.  Such  a  step 
in  Connecticut  would  provide  a  new  basis  for  legislation  in 
other  states. 
//.     From  What  Industries  Should  All  Children  be  Excluded 

Upon  this  question  there  is  a  ground  of  general  agree- 
ment with  a  wide  margin  of  doubt.  We  may  agree  that  all 
mines  and  quarries;  all  mills  in  which,  as  yet,  no  successful 
method  of  guarding  dangerous  machinery  has  been  applied; 
all  factories  in  which  dangerous  acids,  chemicals,  or  high  ex- 
plosives are  used  should  be  positively  shut  against  the  child. 
But  just  what  are  the  kinds  of  industry  referred  to?  In  a 
few  states  a  partial  list  of  industries  regarded  as  dangerous 
has  been  made,  but  nowhere,  we  believe,  with  completeness. 
Neither  can  there  be  until  every  state  shall  establish,  as  New 
York    has    this    year    done,    a    sanitary    department    of    factory 


44  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

inspection  and  shall  have  that  department  so  perfectly  equip- 
ped that  a  report  may  be  made  to  the  state  of  all  forms  of 
industry  that  offer  menace  to  life,  limb,  or  health  and  in 
which  the  measure  of  risk  in  each  may  be  tabulated  upon  their 
record  or  if  they  have  no  record,  upon  their  reputation  else- 
where. 

Such  inspection  will  doubtless  add  to  the  list  of  hazard- 
ous employments,  many  now  looked  upon  as  safe  places  for 
working  children.  They  will  note  the  special  aptitude  of  the 
little  child  to  get  into  danger  or  harm  in  places  that  are 
entirely  safe  for  the  adult — from  the  mere  fact  of  immature 
judgment,  recklessness  and  curiosity. 

The  labor  required  about  a  coal  mine  is  obviously  danger- 
ous, and  we  are  not  surprised  to  learn  from  the  last  avail- 
able statistics  upon  this  point  from  the  anthracite  mines  of 
Pennsylvania  that  among  the  slate  pickers  the  ratio  of  acci- 
dents to  boys  sixteen  and  under  is  300  per  cent,  higher  than 
to  the  men  and  boys  above  sixteen  in  that  branch  of  the  in- 
dustry. 

Ordinary  industries  of  our  states  are  not,  as  a  whole, 
exceptionally  dangerous.  Yet  the  report  of  the  Factory  In- 
spector of  Indiana  for  1907  shows  400  per  cent,  of  accidents 
to  children  as  compared  with  the  adults,  and  the  report  from 
Michigan  in  1907  shows  iioo  per  cent,  of  hazard  to  children — 
in  proportion  to  the  number  employed.  What  is  the  record 
of  the  whole  country?  Are  children  being  sacrificed  by  in- 
dustry twice  as  rapidly,  or  three  times,  or  four  times,  or 
eleven  times,  or  what  is  the  percentage  of  risk  to  the  work- 
ing child?  And  what  are  the  industries  in  which  these  acci- 
dents most  frequently  occur?  We  believe  no  state  wants  to 
mangle  or  kill  its  little  children  in  industry.  We  sin  in 
ignorance.  But  we  have  no  right  longer  to  be  ignorant.  Our 
industries  are  well  enough  developed  and  cause  and  effect 
are  sufficiently  well  known  to  make  ignorance  inexcusable; 
and  we  spend  enough  money  in  public  administration  on  far 
less  important  matters  to  leave  no  excuse  for  neglecting  this 
safeguard  to   the  public  health. 


CHILD   LABOR  45 

Such  a  Federal  Children's  Bureau  as  we  are  urging  would 
have,  as  an  essential  part  of  its  field  of  labor,  to  discover 
and  compile  for  public  information,  all  the  facts  that  can  be 
gleaned  from  the  whole  country  bearing  on  industrial  accidents 
to  children.  A  few  well-compiled  reports,  we  venture  to  pre- 
dict, .would  put  an  end  to  the  discussion.  For  the  present, 
however,  in  default  of  any  more  complete  basis  of  agreement, 
we  may  reasonably  urge  that,  if  fourteen  years  is  to  be  made 
the  minimum  age  for  general  employment,  sixteen  years  shall 
be  laid  as  the  minimum  for  employment  in  all  industries  that 
are  known  to  be  dangerous  in  the  ordinary  sense,  and  eighteen 
years  in  the  extra-hazardous  occupations.  This  higher  age 
limit  should  also,  of  course,  apply  to  all  industries  in  which 
there  is  a  menace  to  the  moral  life. 
///,    Regulations  Governing  Employment  of  Children  and  Youth 

Assuming  that  many  children  on  reaching  the  age  of 
fourteen  years,  or  its  equivalent  in  mental  and  physical  devel- 
opment, may  be  employed,  also  that,  for  those  employed 
there  are  certain  industries  which  are  not  excluded  as  being 
extra  hazardous  or  dangerous,  we  have  to  consider  regulations 
governing  the  work  of  children  between  fourteen  years  and 
maturity  who  are  employed  in  occupations  that  are  not  dan- 
gerous. Shall  we  consent  that,  because  the  child  and  the  in- 
dustry meet  certain  tests,  all  protective  care  on  the  part  of 
the  state  shall  be  removed?  Shall  it  be  lawful  for  a  boy 
who  could  not  be  employed  legally  last  week  to  enter  a  factory 
or  workshop  for  an  unlimited  number  of  hours,  day  and  night, 
simply   because   he   has   attained   a   given   birthday? 

On  some  of  these  questions  we  ought  soon  to  arrive  at 
a  fair  consensus  of  opinion.  We  may  differ  as  to  whether 
the  opening  and  closing  hours  in  a  factory  should  be  five, 
six,  seven,  or  eight  o'clock,  but  there  should  no  longer  be 
any  doubt  as  to  whether  a  young  boy  or  girl,  just  passed  the 
age  of  fourteen,  may  work  a  ten-hour  day  as  in  New  Jersey 
and  Indiana  and  all  the  New  England  states,  or  eleven  hours 
as  in  Alabama,  or  twelve  hours  as  in  North  Carolina,  Penn- 
sylvania and  Georgia,  or  an  unlimited  period  as  in  West 
Virginia,  Kansas,  Oklahoma,  Wyoming,  and  Nevada. 


46  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Here  is  a  plain  question  on  which  neither  the  interests 
of  the  industry,  the  poverty  of  the  family,  nor  any  other 
motive  should  lead  us  to  compromise.  No  child  can  study 
for  a  ten-hour  day  without  serious  injury;  nor  play  for  ten 
hours  or  more  without  harm.  How  much  less  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  a  child  of  tender  years  and  with  bones  but  part- 
ly formed  and  muscles  undeveloped  may  be  put  to  the  single 
task  of  earning  profits  for  its  employer,  or  bread  for  its 
progenitors,  for  a  ten  or  eleven  or  twelve  hour  day,  without 
suffering  an  injury  for  which  society  must  pay  heavily  in 
the   future!" 

It  is  gratifying  to  record  that  already  Ohio,  Illinois,  Nebrasr 
ka.  New  York,  and  Colorado  have  fixed  an  eight-hour  day  for 
children  under  sixteen  years  (the  law  of  New  York  applying 
to  factories,  with  a  nine-hour  day  in  mercantile  establishments, 
and  Ohio  extending  the  eight-hour  protection  in  the  case  of 
girls  to  eighteen  years).  No  evidence  is  on  record,  either 
from  the  reports  of  the  Factory  Inspectors,  the  School  au- 
thorities, the  compilers  of  labor  and  industrial  statistics,  or 
from  the  operators  of  the  industries  affected  or  the  families 
of  the  children  concerned,  to  show  that  any  serious  interrup- 
tion to  business  has  been  suffered,  or  that  poverty  and  family 
dependence  have  increased.  On  the  other  hand,  these  reports, 
official  and  unofficial,  tend  to  show  that  some  industries  have 
adopted  the  eight-hour  schedule,  while  others  have  been  en- 
couraged to  advance  to  higher  levels,  because  of  the  elimina- 
tion of  those  who  could  not  profitably  be  employed  for  a  short- 
er period  than  the  normal  working  day,  and  the  consequent 
substitution  of  older  and  more'  competent  employees.  As 
to  the  families  affected,  the  reports  from  state  and  local  com- 
mittees to  be  presented  at  this  conference  will  show  that  the 
dread  of  causing  sick  fathers  and  widowed  mothers  to  starve 
because  little  children  are  forbidden  to  be  crushed  under 
excessive  industrial  burdens  is  a  needless  dread.  Poverty 
has  rather  tended  to  decrease  and  family  standards  have 
tended  to  advance  toward  the  line  of  self-support  as  a  result 
of  these  humane  measures. 


CHILD    LABOR  47 

In  the  light  of  this  experience,  shall  we  not  agree  that 
we  have  a  plain  duty  to  press  upon  the  people  of  the  states 
adjoining  those  mentioned,  namely:  Indiana,  Michigan,  Wiscon- 
sin, Iowa,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania  add  Connecticut,  as  well 
as  a  number  of  younger  western  states — the  need  of  throwing 
this  special  form  of  protection  about  those  who  are  on  the 
border  line  between  childhood  and  youth.  Shall  we  not  urge 
them  to  establish  an  eight-hour  day  for  all  children  under 
sixteen  years  in  all  wage-earning  employments? 

The  necessity  of  gradual  approach  to  this  reasonable  stand- 
ard is  recognized,  therefore  we  shall  count  it  a  gain,  if  in 
Pennsylvania  this  year  a  ten-hour  day  can  be  secured  for 
children  of  fourteen  or  if  in  North  Carolina  the  hours  per 
week  can  be  reduced  from  sixty-six  to  sixty. 
Night  Work 

The  same  conclusions  are  potent  as  against  all  industrial 
employment  at  night.  It  may  be  granted  that  certain  forms  of 
industry  can  be  carried  on  more  profiably  when  operated  day 
and  night  and  that  no  legislation  should  be  enacted  which 
will  cripple  them  in  their  night  operations.  But  when  the  wel- 
fare of  a  child  or  youth  of  eleven  or  thirteen  or  fifteen  years 
is  involved,  argument  should  be  at  an  end.  If  the  child  can- 
not find  a  place  in  the  industry  without  being  subjected  to  the 
obvious  injuries  of  night  work,  then  let  him  be  excluded 
altogether. 

The  chief  opposition  to  such  restriction  will  continue  to 
come  from  those  engaged  in  the  glass  manufacturing  industry. 
Night  work-of  children  is  practiced  in  other  industries,  especial- 
ly in  certain  textile  industries,  but  not  as  a  recognized  essential 
feature  of  the  industry.  No  cotton  mill  or  silk  mill  has  pro- 
claimed its  inability  to  exist  without  the  systematic  employment 
of  little  children  at  night.  Yet  the  glass  industry,  a  branch  of 
manufacturing  that  has  made  as  great  progress  as  any  other 
in  this  country  in  the  past  quarter-century,  under  the  influence 
of  an  exceedingly  high  protective  tariff,  stoutly  claims  that 
the  prohibition  of  night  employment  of  little  boys  will  be  its 
ruin.  The  cry  usually  takes  the  form  of  a  threat  to  move  the 
factories   to   some   other   state. 


48  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

Three  states  in  which  glass  is  extensively  produced  have 
enacted  laws  forbidding  the  night  employment  of  children  under 
sixteen  years.  These  are  New  York,  Ohio  and  Illinois.  These 
states  stand,  according  to  the  Census  report  of  1905,  as  fourth, 
fifth  and  .'leventh  in  the  scale  of  glass-producing  states. 

The  chief  glass-producing  states  which  at  present  permit 
the  employment  of  children  under  sixteen  years  at  night  are 
New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Indiana,  West  Virginia,  Maryland, 
Missouri  and  Kansas.  In  Indiana,  West  Virginia,  Pennsylvania 
and  New  Jersey  bills  are  before  the  legislatures  this  winter 
forbidding  such  employment.  Were  it  possible  to  combine  the 
forces  working  for  such  legislation  in  these  four  states,  we 
believe  the  glass  manufacturers  would  be  less  opposed  and 
might  consider  favorably  such  simultaneous  action. 
Vacation  Permits 

Among  the  specific  questions  that  are  to  receive  considera- 
tion here  is  the  question:  "What  shall  be  done  in  the  case  of 
school  children  who  apply  for  permits  to  work  during  the  long 
vacations?"  On  this  matter  there  is  the  greatest  confusion  of 
opinions  and  programs.  In  the  discussion,  which  we  hope  will 
bring  about  a  degree  of  harmony  in  action,  we  suggest  that 
in  the  case  of  vacation  permits  the  injurj'  to  the  child  is  not 
so  much  from  the  work  he  does,  although  too  little  attention 
has  been  given  to  the  right  of  the  child  to  a  period  of 
relaxation  from  the  overwork  often  required  in  our  schools,  but 
what  makes  the  summer  work  a  menace  to  the  child's  develop- 
ment is  the  difference  between  what  he  does  in  the  summer 
and  what  he  will  have  to  do  in  school  in  the  fall.^The  prover- 
bial reluctance  among  working  children  to  return  to  school 
ought  to  be  a  clear  suggestion  to  our  communities  as  to  what 
the  school  should  be.  The  fact  that  people  are  now  so  per- 
plexed about  what  to  do  with  the  children  prevented  from 
work  either  in  vacation  or  at  all  times  constitutes  the  strongest 
possible  argument  for  co-operation  with  the  National  Educa- 
tion Association  and  those  associations  formed  to  promote 
practical  education,  to  the  end  that  a  constructive  program 
shall  be   worked  out  without  delay. 


CHILD   LABOR  49 

Street  Trades 

The  various  street  trades  and  work  in  city  tenements  are 
forms  of  child  employment  sorely  in  need  of  study  and  reg- 
ulation. The  physical  difficulty  in  regulating  the  hours  and 
conditions  of  employment  in  street  trades  is  greater  than  in 
the  case  of  factories  and  mines.  It  is  further  complicated  by  the 
traditions  which  teach  that  the  little  newsboy  or  messenger 
of  eight  or  ten  years  is  the  only  support  of  his  widowed 
mother,  and  furthermore,  that  the  little  man  is  on  the  straight 
road  to  the  White  House  or  the  presidency  of  some  billion  dol- 
lar trust.  We  stupidly  adhere  to  these  delusions,  overlooking  the 
sacrifice  of  health,  education  and  character,  which  in  the  over- 
whelming majority  of  instances  are  suffered  by  infant  news- 
boys and  night  messengers,  while  we  have  kept  the  mind  fixed 
on  the  few  notable  men^  who  rose  to  eminence  from  a  child- 
hood in  these  nomadic  pursuits. 

Sweat  Shops 

In  the  matter  of  tenement-house  employment  the  question 
of  regulation  is  further  complicated  by  the  tradition  of  parental 
ownership.  We  are  asked,  "How  dare  the  state  invade  the 
sacred  inclosure  of  a  man's  own  home  and  deny  his  right  to 
the  help  of  his  own  children,  who  work  under  the  home  roof?" 
Tlie  question  sounds  conclusive,  but  it  is  wholly  specious. 
Its  answer  is  in  two  parts.  In  the  first  place,  the  place  invaded 
is  not  a  "sacred  inclosure."  The  tenement  house  workshops 
in  our  cities  are  not  under  home  roofs,  but  in  crowded  blocks 
of  congested  humanity,  where  hundreds  of  our  nation's  little 
children  are  burning  out  their  eyes  at  night  as  they  work  in 
the  dim  gas  light  on  some  monotonous  task  which  develops 
neither  mind  nor  body.  For  this  labor  the  only  rewards  are 
shamefully  inadequate  wages,  bent  and  diseased  spines,  stooped 
shoulders,  contracted  lungs — the  culture  beds  of  deadly  germs, 
and  the  other  natural  fruits  of  wrong  physical  environment. 
In  the  second  place,  the  child  is  not  a  parental  asset.  The  state 
is  bound  by  the  law  of  self-preservation  to  deny  a  father  or 
mother  the  privilege  of  exacting  from  his  own  child  what 
would    be    regarded    as    cruel    or    injurious    if    exacted    from 


50  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

another's  child.  If  the  parent,  either  through  poverty,  vice  or 
ignorance  is  unable  to  provide  the  care  and  protection  needed, 
then  the  state  is  bound  to  enter  and  become  the  parent  of 
that  child. 

Farm  Labor 

A  kind  of  child  labor  which  has  received  too  little  attention 
in  this  country  is  to  be  discussed  at  this  conference.  It  has 
generally  been  assumed  that  if  children  work  on  the  farm  there 
can  be  no  objection  to  their  employment.  Indeed,  one  of  the 
most  prominent  critics  of  the  work  of  this  committee  in 
questioning  our  representations  as  to"  the  extent  of  child  labor 
in  America  with  one  sweep  brushed  aside  all  the  children 
working  on   farms   as   wholly  beyond   the   need   of  attention. 

Naturally  the  factory  and  mine  have  received  the  first  atten- 
tion, for  there  the  children  are  congregated,  and  if  evils  exist 
they  are  more  apparent.  But  disturbing  reports  are  coming 
to  us  from  many  parts  of  the  country,  testifying  to  the 
neglect  or  the  abuse  of  childhood  in  the  rural  districts.  We 
learn  of  the  twelve-hour  workday  in  the  berry  fields  of  New 
Jersey;  of  the  congestion,  overwork,  and  immorality  in  the 
vegetable  gardens  of  Delaware  and  Maryland,  where  the  pickers' 
shanty  repeats  the  unhealthy  evils  of  the  city  tenement;  of  the 
beet-sugar  fields  of  Michigan,  Nebraska  and  Colorado,  and  the 
tobacco  fields  and  stripping  barns  in  Connecticut,  Kentucky, 
Virginia  and   Pennsylvania. 

Reports  reach  us  from  many  parts  of  the  country  which  pro- 
duce tobacco  in  large  quantities  that  not  only  are  the  children 
kept  from  school  during  the  harvesting  season,  but  that 
through  the  winter,  whenever  the  weather  is  favorable  for 
stripping  tobacco,  they  are  kept  from  school  one,  two  and 
three  days  a  week,  thus  their  education  is  interrupted  and  the 
whole  school  system  demoralized. 

In  the  fruit-canning  sections  of  New  York  state,  eighteen 
months  ago,  a  thorough  investigation  of  child  labor  was  made, 
which  revealed  such  abuse  of  little  children  that  the  canners 
hiding  behind  a  technicality  in  the  agreement  with  those 
directing  the  investigation  insisted  that  they  suppress  the  pub- 


CHILD   LABOR  51 

fication  of  the  report,  lest  its  publication  ruin  the  industry. 
Canners  in  the  states  not  investigated  would,  it  was  claimed, 
use  this  report  against  their  New  York  competitors,  although 
the  same  abuses  are  believed  to  exist  in  nearly  every  section 
of  the  country  where  canning  is  extensive. 
'IV.     Constructive  Measures 

But  manifestly  legislation  that  eliminates  the  child  or  the 
industry  is  not  enough.  There  is  the  constructive  side.  As  to 
the  industry,  perhaps  we  need  not  concern  ourselves.  It  is 
enough  to  know  that  no  necessary  form  of  industry  has  ever 
been  permanently  crippled  by  excluding  the  children  from  it. 
Iriventive  genius  has  always  come  to  the  rescue  of  the  in- 
dustry and  has  found  a  way  to  apply  better  methods  or  better 
machinery,  which  in  the  end  has  put  the  industry  on  a  higher 
plane  and  rendered  better  service  than  the  child  had  ever  done. 

At  a  time  when  all  over  the  country  so  large  an  army  of 
unemployed  men  exists  as  a  burden  upon  the  charitable 
agencies  of  our  communities  and  as  a  menace  to  individual 
virtue  and  the  foundations  of  the  home,  there  can  certainly 
be  no  justification  for  the  contention  that  manufacturing  in- 
dustries would  be  crippled  by  the  elimination  of  young  children. 
Indeed,  there  is  a  double  motive  for  the  release  of  young 
children  from  industry.  Not  only  are  the  children  benefited  by 
having  a  substantial  addition  made  to  their  period  of  prepara- 
tion for  the  obligations  of  maturity,  but  the  normal  demands 
of  our  industries  would  inevitably  draw  into  service  large 
numbers  of  able-bodied  men  who  are  now  idle. 

But  the  problem  of  what  to  do  with  the  child  is  less  simple. 
The  question  arises  as  soon  as  a  child  is  thrown  out  of  em- 
ployment by  a  new  law.  "What  are  you  going  to  dO  with  him?" 
And  no  one  seems  to  know.  At  least  there  is  no  agreement 
upon  the  point.  A  mother  in  Washington  a  few  days  ago 
charged  the  child-labor  law  of  the  District  of  Columbia  with 
making  her  son  a  forger.  The  newspaper  story  does  not  bear 
the  majks  of  authenticity,  but  it  serves  to  illustrate  the  feeling 
of  a  large  number  of  people  throughout  the  country.  The 
point  of  view  of  those   who   would  leave   all   children   to  work 


52  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

indefinitely  until  society  has  fully  prepared  to  take  care  of 
them,  loses  some  of  its  force  when  it  is  remembered  that  the 
same  opposition  to  the  law  is  found  in  Ohio,  where  boys  under 
sixteen  and  girls  under  eighteen  have  been  thrown  out  of 
employments  which  could  not  use  them  on  an  eight-hour  day, 
and  in  Alabama  and  Arkansas,  where  children  of  eleven  years 
are  thrown  out  because  they  were  not  fortunate  enough  to  have 
a  widowed  mother  or  a  crippled  father. 

None  the  less,  the  question  is  a  vital  one,  and  calls  for 
careful  study.  It  is  easy  to  say,  "Give  the  child  a  practical 
education  and  thus  fit  him  for  a  useful  industrial  life."  But 
where?  In  many  states  the  only  place  a  child  can  get  a 
practical  education  is  in  a  reform  school. 

In  default  of  such  opportunity  for  a  practical  education  the 
schools  are  yearly  leaking  a  large  percentage  of  those  who 
enter  the  early  grades.  Less  than  thirteen  per  cent,  of  all 
enrolled  pupils  were  reported  as  above  the  fifth  grade  in  the 
last  United  States  Educational  Report.  It  is  obvious  that  those 
who  leave  school  at  ages  varying  from  eight  to  thirteen  years 
of  age  are  wholly  unprepared  for  the  industrial  battle  of  life. 
Even  children  who  remain  in  school  to  the  end  of  the  compul- 
sory period  in  some  of  the  more  advanced  states  are  totally 
unfit  to  enter  industry.  The  following  sentences  from  the 
unpublished  manuscript  of  the  forthcoming  report  of  the  New 
Jersey  Commission  on  Industrial  Education  are  significant: 
"Fully  ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  pupils  leave  school  between 
the  ages  of  fourteen  and  seventeen,  and  without  having  formed 
any  idea  as  to  what  trade  or  vocation  they  should  follow;  in 
consequence  they  drift  into  occupations  rather  than  select  those 
which  might  be  most  nearly  suited  to  their  aptitudes,  and 
their  progress  is  generally  arrested  at  an  an  early  age,  because 
of  the  restricted  character  of  their  experience  and  the  failure 
to  receive  supplementary  instruction." 

Much  interest  attaches  to  the  experiments  that  are  being 
tried  in  a  number  of  communities,  in  making  a  closer  alliance 
between  the  school  and  the  manfacturing  and  commerical  enter- 
prises. It  is  argued  that  by  such  an  arrangement  children  may 
have  an  introduction  to   the  practical  phases  of  industrial   life 


CHILD    LABOR  53 

without  interfering  with  their  school  work.  In  our  discussion 
of  this  project  we  should  not  overlook  the  necessity  of  a 
radical  revision  in  the  school  curriculum.  The  demands  for 
book  learning  in  many  of  our  city  schools  at  present  lay  upon 
the  pupils  a  burden  of  home  work,  which  not  only  robs  child- 
hood of  its  rightful  recreation,  but  is  a  menace  to  the  health 
and  a  chief  motive  in  the  child  to  end  the  school  career.  It 
would  be  necessary  also  radically  to  change  the  processes  in 
the  industries  under  consideration  if  they  are  to  have  any 
value  for  the  child.  If  he  is  to  be  placed  in  a  factory  to  do  the 
monotonous  tasks  now  required  of  the  unskilled  workers,  he 
might,  it  is  true,  earlier  become  self-supporting,  but  his  in- 
dustrial cfifiiciency  would  be  thwarted  rather  than  promoted. 

The  proper  equipment  for  industrial  education  in  the  schools 
of  our  country  would,  in  relation  to  this  problem  of  Child 
Labor,  accomplish  two  very  desirable  results: 

(i)  A  far  larger  percentage  of  pupils  would  remain  in  school 
to  or  beyond  the  termination  of  the  compulsory  period,  thus 
vastly  simplifying  the  work  of  factory  inspectors  and  truant  of- 
ficers. It  is  well  enough  to  talk  of  the  error  of  catering  to  the 
whim  of  the  child,  nevertheless,  until  the  American  school 
house  becomes  a  place  to  be  sought  by  the  children  of  our  com- 
munities, instead  of  shunned,  we  shall  continue  to  witness  the 
suicide  of  the  higher  school  grades,  the  sacrifice  of  children  in 
our  factories  and  mines,  or  their  almost  equally  disastrous  ex- 
posure to  the  perils  of  idleness. 

(2)  We  should  be  able,  as  we  are  not  at  present,  to  place  the 
young  child  improperly  equipped,  in  an  environment  certain  to 
meet  his  immediate  need  of  training  and  certain  to  produce 
for  his  family  the  material  rewards  which  were  their  chief 
motive  in  having  him  employed. 

Our  four-fold  duty,  therefore,  seems  clear: — (i)  To  exclude 
all  young  children  and  all  undeveloped  children  from  the  bur- 
dens of  wage-earning  industries;  (2)  to  forbid  the  employment 
of  all  children  and  youth  in  industries  which  menace  life, 
health  or  morals;  (3)  to  limit  the  hours,  forbid  the  night  em- 
ployment, and  otherwise  guard  the  conditions  of  those  children 
and  youth  who  may  be  employed,  and  (4)  to  aid  in  those  con- 


54  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

structive  measures  which  aim  to  revise  the  curriculum  and 
equip  the  facilities  of  the  public  schools  to  meet  the  recognized 
needs  of  an  industrial  civilization. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.   33:   Sup.   86-99. 
March,  1909. 

Practical    Restrictions    on    Child    Labor   in   Textile    Industries; 

Higher  Educational  and  Physical  Qualifications. 

Howell   Cheney. 

As  a  rule  the  textile  industries,  both  north  and  south,  have 
been  advertised  as  among  the  worst  offenders  against  the  chil- 
dren, and  I  suppose  that  it  is  on  this  account  that  your  sec- 
retary has  asked  me  to  explain  the  attitude  of  a  textile  industry 
which  has  found  that  it  could  do  without  the  labor  of  children,  at 
least  until  they  were  fifteen  years  old. 

At  the  start.  I  must  explain  that  my  experience  has  been 
confined  to  but  one  branch  of  the  textile  trade,  namely,  siik 
manufacturing.  The  conditions  surrounding  this  industry  have, 
however,  given  me  exceptional  opportunities  to  study  the  prob- 
lem, not  alone  from  the  mill  standpoint,  but  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  school. 

The  firm  by  which  I  am  employed  has  roughly  some  3,600 
hands.  The  plant  is  situated  at  some  distance  from  a  city,  and, 
in  a  community  of  approximately  13.000  inhabitants,  is  the 
principal  industry.  Most  of  the  employees  in  the  mill  live  with- 
in one  school  district,  which  has  1,800  children  enumerated. 
As  a  member  of  the  Board  of  Education,  it  has  been  my  duty 
for  four  years  to  pass  upon  the  certificates  of  children  leaving 
school  to  go  to  work,  and  also  for  the  last  two  years  I  have  in- 
spected the  applications  of  persons  under  sixteen  years  of  age 
applying  for  work,  to  see  that  they  had  conformed  to  the  state 
laws  and  school  regulations,  and  to  the  firm's  rule  that  they 
would  employ  no  children  under  fifteen  years  of  age.  As  a 
great  majority  of  the  children  attended  one  school  and  went  to 
work,  if  at  all.  for  one  firm,  it  has  been  possible  as  in  few  oth- 
er places  to  watch  the  workings  of  a  rule  forbidding  the  em- 
ployment  of   children    for  a  year  more  than   the   law   required. 


CHILD   LABOR  55 

and  of  a  school  board  ruling  that  no  child  should  leave  to  go 
to  work  who  had  not  completed  the  sixth  grade.  This  ruling 
was  possible  but  not  customary  under  the  Connecticut  law,  the 
fourth  grade  being  usually  considered  sufificient  to  earn  a  cer- 
tificate. Therefore,  neither  the  school  nor  the  mill  had  a  com- 
pelling law  behind  it,  but  the  fact  gave  a  much  greater  oppor- 
tunity to  study  the  exceptions,  because  they  all  had  to  be  an- 
swered reasonably  rather  than  legally. 

Of  course,  every  just  exception  which  led  to  giving  work 
to  a  child  made  it  more  difficult  to  keep  others  out.  I  must 
say  frankly  at  the  start  that  there  was  some  opposition  among 
some  of  the  heads  of  departments  to  excluding  these  children. 
But  in  all  those  departments  where  the  work  requires  consecu- 
tive labor  demanding  concentration,  attention  and  care,  there 
is  now  a  unanimity  of  opinion  that  a  textile  industry  can  do  bet- 
ter without  than  with  children,  until  they  are  at  least  fifteen  years 
of  age.  The  boy  or  girl  of  sixteen  will  actually  give  in  work 
at  least  half  an  hour  a  day  more  than  the  average  younger 
child;  will  do  at  least  five  per  cent  more  work,  hour  for  hour 
with  an  appreciable  less  amount  of  waste  of  material  and  dam- 
age to  finished  product.  The  work  will  require  less  supervision, 
and  will  be  of  a  higher  grade  when  finished.  The  savings 
secured  to  the  employer  by  the  older  child  as  an  offset  to 
the  fifteen  per  cent  higher  wage  can  be  better  measured  by  ex- 
perience than  by  statistics,  which  are  noticeable  only  by  their 
absence.  But  wherever  the  work  to  be  done  is  continuous  for 
nine  or  ten  hours,  and  requires  attention  as  long  as  the  ma- 
chinery runs,  our  experience  would  say  emphatically  that  the 
increased  production  by  the  older  child,  of  goods  of  a  higher 
grade,  at  a  lower  cost  of  supervision  and  all  other  overhead 
charges,  is  cheaper  than  the  production  of  the  fourteen  year 
old  child  at  a  lower  wage.  Two  factors  have  been  constantly 
at  work  in  the  silk  industry  to  bring  about  a  changed  condition 
in  respect  to  child  labor. 

I.  We  are  constantly  raising  the  standard  of  our  goods, 
and  hence  the  workmanship.  A  plain  black  grosgrain  for 
which  my  firm  made  a  name  forty  years  ago,  would  not  be  a 


56  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

marketable  piece  of  goods  now.  Every  process  requires  more 
exact  handling  than  it  did  then. 

2.  The  great  strides  in  improved  machines  have  not  been 
made  without  a  nearly  proportionate  increase  in  the  capital  in- 
vested, and  hence  it  is  increasingly  necessary  to  secure  the 
maximum  production  of  machinery  to  pay  a  fair  return  on 
capital.  Twenty  years  ago  an  investment  of  $1000  per  loom 
would  have  been  considered  ample  to  build  and  equip  a  mill 
of  one  hundred  silk  ribbon  looms,  where  to-day  $2000  a  loom 
would  be  necessary  to  place  your  plant  on  a  plane  of  efficiency 
equal  to  the  most  up-to-date  mills.  Consider,  therefore,  how 
much  more  necessary  it  is  to  watch  the  product  of  a  machine 
and  its  operator  per  day  and  hour.  When  you  couple  these 
conditions  with  a  raw  material  worth  from  three  dollars  to 
seven  dollars  per  pound,  and  in  which  a  careless  hand  can 
spoil  more  in  an  hour  than  he  can  earn  in  a  week,  he  is  either 
a  very  poor  silk  manufacturer,  or  a  manufacturer  of  very  poor 
goods,  who  persuades  himself  that  there  is  any  economy  in 
child  labor  as  far  as  silk  throwing,  dyeing,  winding,  warping, 
quilling,  weaving  or  finishing  goes. 

The  processes  already  described  include  all  those  in  silk 
manufacturing  in  which  the  work  is  continuous  and  demands 
more  or  less  constant  attention  as  long  as  the  machinery  runs. 
In  these  there  is  no  economy  in  the  employment  of  children, 
at  least  until  they  are  fifteen  years  of  age. 

In  the  above  I  have  stated  as  fully  as  possible  the  economic 
reasons  only  which  lead  me  to  believe  that  child  labor  is  not  at 
all  essential  to  the  silk  textile  industries.  In  all  frankness  I 
must  also  present  to  you  the  difficulties  which  manufacturers 
must  overcome  in  doing  away  with  this  class  of  labor.  I  be- 
lieve your  agitation  would  make  more  rapid  headway  and  ob- 
tain the  co-operation  of  the  more  enlightened  manufacturers, 
if  it  would  concern  itself  with  the  making  of  these  difficulties 
less  where  principles  are  not  sacrificed,  rather  than  by  accentu- 
ating them  by  prohibitive  legislation.  There  are  distinct  lines 
on  which  you  can  co-operate  with  the  manufacturer,  and  I 
am  sure  he  will  meet  you  halfway  in  them. 


CHILD   LABOR  57 

Discrimination  Needed. 

The  first  of  these  leads  to  a  group  of  employments  in  which 
the  work  is  intermittent  and  requires  the  attention  of  the  em- 
ployee for  perhaps  not  more  than  two-thirds  or  one-half  of  the 
time.  This  covers  a  variety  of  jobs  which  in  the  total  would 
not  employ  a  large  number  of  hands,  such  as  "dofTers"  or  chil- 
dren who  replace  the  full  spools  on  a  spinning  frame  with 
empty  ones ;  bobbin  boys,  who  keep  the  various  operators  of 
machines  supplied  with  spools  and  deliver  the  full  ones  to  the 
next  process;  booth  tenders,  who  in  weaving  rooms  hand  out 
the  full  filling  boards  to  the  weavers  and  refill  the  empty  ones; 
and  a  small  number  of  errand  boys  and  girls.  In  all  of  these  cases 
the  work  is  intermittent,  i.  e.,  allows  for  periods  of  rest,  and  in 
none  of  them  are  children  engaged  in  the  operation  of  run- 
ning machinery.  This  group  of  employments  is  much  more  im- 
portant to  the  cotton  industries  than  to  the  silk.  It  is  possible 
to  define  it,  as  above,  in  legislation  on  the  subject;  and  the 
employment  is  not  injurious  to  the  children  where  it  is  safe- 
guarded by  registration  with  factory  inspectors  for  all  cTiildren 
over  fourteen  years  of  age  so  employed,  and  permits  issued 
only  after  inspection  of  the  conditions  and  hours  under  which 
they  work.  It  represents  a  group  of  employments  which  con- 
stitute a  peculiar  problem  to  the  manufacturer,  and  in  them 
centers  an  economic  opposition  to  further  restrictions  on  this 
class  of  labor. 

This  kind  of  employment  illustrates  a  point  I  wish  to  em- 
phasize. I  believe  that  your  agitation  does  not  always  take 
account  either  of  the  things  which  children  can  do  in  a  mill 
with  less  chances  of  injury  than  they  encounter  on  the  streets 
and  in  work  at  home,  or  of  the  perplexities  which  the  manu- 
facturer encounters,  both  as  a  maker  of  goods  and  an  employ- 
er of  labor.  With  him  it  is  not  alone  a  question  of  economies 
in  particular  jobs,  important  as  these  are,  but  of  maintaining 
a  scale  of  wages  fairly  adjusted  to  the  skill  required  and 
amount  of  work  done.  If  he  pays  a  girl  one  dollar  and  twenty- 
five  cents  to  put  empty  spools  on  in  place  of  full  ones,  and 
then  to  rest  for  half  an  hour,  when  a  girl  at  seventy-five  cents 


58  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

can  do  it  just  as  well,  he  not  only  increases  his  cost  in  a  small 
item,  but  invites  a  condition  of  dissatisfaction  with  all  of  the 
other  one  dollar  and  twenty-five  cent  help  in  his  mill. 

It  is  one  of  the  difficult  problems  in  manufacturing  to  make 
a  wage  scale  fairly  proportioned  to  a  wide  range  of  abilities, 
and  one's  capacity  for  fair  dealing  is  measured  largely  by  one's 
success  in  this  respect.  The  manufacturer  has  often  given  un- 
selfish thought  and  anxiety  to  the  problems  which  you  are 
agitating,  and  can  work  with  an  intelligence  born  of  actual  ex- 
perience, which  is  not  possible  for  you  on  the  outside  of  a  mill 
to  approach.  It  may  be  a  truism  to  say  that  if  you  devoted 
more  time  to  his  difficulties  you  would  encounter  his  opposition 
less. 

His  next  most  serious  difficulty  is  in  meeting  your  demand 
for  an  eight-hour  day  for  laborers  between  fourteen  and  six- 
teen years  of  age.  As  long  as  the  machinery  runs  in  his  mills 
there  must  be  operatives  to  tend  them,  and  these  operatives 
must  have  their  assistants,  doffers,  bobbin  boys  and  booth  ten- 
ders, ~"  If  their  labor  is  essential,  it  is  just  as  essential  from  four 
to  six  as  it  was  in  the  earlier  hours.  In  the  proposal  of  a  fifty- 
five  hour  week  for  such  employees  he  would  more  readily  meet 
you,  because  by  shifts  it  is  easier  to  arrange  the  work  to  meet 
a  deficiency  one  afternoon  in  a  week  than  for  a  shorter  portion 
of  every  afternoon.  He  would  also  more  readily  meet  you  in 
the  enforcing  of  more  stringent  physical  and  educational 
standards,  which  would  keep  out  the  physically  defective  or 
mentally  deficient  children  to  whom  the  longer  hours  would 
prove  injurious.  I  believe  such  physical  and  mental  standards 
should  be  rigidly  enforced.  But  in  allying  yourself  with  the 
eight-hour  cry  you  are  weakening  your  cause  to  the  extent  that 
you  are  burdening  the  child-labor  issue  with  a  more  general 
economic  question. 

There  is  a  final  difficulty  in  connection  with  the  restrictions 
on  child  labor  in  which  the  manufacturer  finds  you  in  sympathy 
with  him,  namely,  in  providing  a  system  of  industrial  training 
which  will  produce  more  efficient  labor  than  our  present  school 
system  does.     I  will  refer  to  this  matter  more  fully  later. 


CHILD   LABOR  59 

To  summarize  my  arguments  up  to  this  point,  I  would  say — 

1.  The  silk  textile  industries  realize  no  economy  from  child 
labor  where  the  work  is  continuous,  and  in  these  employments 
economic  forces  and  conditions  of  production  are  working  out 
the  problem  in  harmony  with  the  moral  campaign  to  which 
you  have  given  an  impetus. 

2.  Where  the  work  is  not  continuous,  or  not  engaged  in 
direct  operation  of  running  machinery,  and  is  not  paid  by  the 
piece,  it  should  be  your  policy  to  safeguard  the  children  by  re- 
strictions rather  than  by  prohibitions. 

3.  The  organization  of  a  mill  cannot  lend  itself  to  one  set 
of  hours  for  mature  workers  and  another  set  for  fourteen  to 
sixteen  year  old  hands,  and  here  again  restrictions  will  accom- 
plish your  ends  without  prohibitions. 

In  brief,  prohibition  of  child  labor  in  the  textile  industries, 
wherever  the  work  is  continuous  and  involves  the  operation  of 
running  machinery,  is  necessary.  Restriction  is  required  only 
where  the  work  is  intermittent,  or  is  not  done  under  the  strain 
of  the  piece-work  system,  or  the  worker  is  not  directly  engaged 
in  tending  machinery. 

So  far  as  economy  of  production  goes,  as  a  manufacturer 
I  believe  we  can  do  without  the  labor  of  children.  But 
ridiculous  though  the  statement  may  sound  to  some  of  you, 
from  an  intimate  connection  with  the  schooling  on  a  large  scale 
of  the  children  of  laboring  people,  I  feel  that  these  children  can- 
not do  without  the  work  until  a  better  substitute  than  the  present 
school  is  provided.  The  theoretical  proposition  "that  the  worst 
thing  a  child  can  do  is  to  go  to  work,"  is  more  true  than  its  comp- 
lement "that  the  best  thing  for  a  child  to  do  until  he  is  sixteen 
years  of  age  is  to  go  to  school." 

You  too  often  approach  the  problem  from  the  theoretical 
side,  and  stating  the  condition  under  which  the  normal  child 
can  best  develop,  you  assume  that  there  is  a  choice  open  to 
the  average  child  between  these  conditions  on  the  one  hand 
and  work  on  the  other.  You  infer  that  he  has  plenty  of 
nourishing  food;  that  he  is  working  progressively  in  school; 
that  his  hours  out  of  school  are  given  to  proper  recreation  and 
fresh   air,   and  that  his   home   life   protects   him   from   evil    in- 


6o  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

fluences,  while  he  is  undergoing  a  discipline  or  training  which 
will  prepare  him  for  his  future  work  in  the  world.  You  assume 
that  it  is  a  choice  between  a  healthy  growth  under  these 
conditions  and  work  that  is  physically  injurious,  mentally  stulti- 
fying and  morally  degrading.  Of  course,  this  is  a  colored 
picture   intended  to   illustrate  a  not  uncommon  attitude. 

Whoever  studies  this  problem  of  child  labor  must  soon 
come  into  a  sense  of  its  many-sidedness.  It  is  only  secondarily 
a  problem  in  economics  and  primarily  one  in  humanity  in 
general  and  education  in  particular,  and  I  believe  that  its 
ultimate  solution  must  be  found  in  the  schools  rather  than  in 
the  mills. 

It  may  seem  somewhat  surprising  to  you,  but  the  manu- 
facturer's point  of  view,  if  he  be  at  all  progressive,  and  if  his 
plant  has  been  established  long  enough  for  him  to  appreciate 
the  responsibility  it  owes  to  its  workers  no  less  than  to  its 
stockholders,  is  not  radically  divergent  from  yours.  Unless  he 
be  blind  to  everything  but  his  next  quarterly  dividend,  he 
appreciates  far  more  forcibly  than  you  do  that  keen  minds, 
active  bodies  and  willing  hearts  transmitted  from  the  apprentice 
to  the  master,  or  from  the  child  to  the  man,  make  directly  for 
steady  and  devoted  helpers,  for  ingenuity,  interest  and  efficien- 
cy— in  brief,  for  skill  and  economy.  If  he  is  building  for  his 
sons,  no  less  than  for  his  own  immediate  pocket — and  many  an 
Aiperican  father  has  that  habit — he  knows  more  certainly  than 
you  can  appreciate  that  fair  dealing  with  his  help  has  no  un- 
certain connection  with  fair  dealing  with  his  customers,  in 
goods  made  with  all  the  interest,  the  intelligence  and  the  force 
which  he  can  command.  More  than  all,  he  knows,  or  he  has 
missed  the  highest  possibilities  of  his  business,  that  nothing  else 
can  supply  these  qualities  in  his  goods  or  any  improvements 
in  mechanical  processes  make  good  their  absence.  Humanity 
plays  no  less  a  part  in  successful  manufacturing  than  in  any  of 
the  occupations  by   which   selfish  man   makes  his  living. 

But  if  what  I  have  said  is  true,  you  will  at  once  challenge 
my  statements  by  demanding  an  explanation  of  the  presence  of 
child  labor  in  these  trades.  Frankly  admitting  the  selfish 
motives  of  manufacturers,  I  will  endeavor  to  show  the  influences 


CHILD   LABOR  6i 

Avhich  are  at  work  on  this  problem,  and  you  will  please  bear 
in  mind  that  I  am  speaking  of  the  Northern  and  Eastern 
states,  where  only  children  who  are  over  fourteen  years  of  age, 
working  not  more  than  sixty  hours  a  week,  under  some 
educational  qualifications,  are  employed.  I  would  say  that  the 
presence  of  these  children  in  the  factories  is  due  to  three  causes, 
whose  potency  will  vary  with  every  locality  and  in  every 
family. 

(i)  Belief  on  the  part  of  the  manufacturers  that  such 
labor  is  profitable,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  in  maintaining 
an  average  wage  scale  and  as  an  apprenticeship  system. 

(2)  The  desire  on  the  part  of  the  parents,  or  children,  or 
both,  for  a  larger  income. 

(3)  The  failure  of  the  school  to  advance  or  interest  the 
average  child  of  over  fourteen  years  of  age  who  is  going  to 
work  with  his  hands. 

The  interests  of  the  manufacturer  I  have  described  above, 
and  have  endeavored  to  point  out  practical  ways  in  which  he 
could  co-operate  with  you.  But  in  reality  you  have  no  right  to 
consider  his  interests  except  in  so  far  as  they  are  identical 
with  those  of  the  children.  Turning  to  the  family  and  educa- 
tional side  of  the  question,  I  will  attempt  to  explain,  from  a 
personal  observation  which  is  the  result  of  responsibility  for 
a  school  system  in  a  textile  town,  the  influences  which  are 
compelling  children  to  go  to  work,  where  the  manufacturer's 
selfishness  is  at  least  restricted.  I  will  leave  the  conclusion 
to  point  its  own  moral — that  the  truest  safeguards  you  can 
erect  for  the  protection  of  these  children  are  higher  educa- 
tional qualifications  which  enlist  the  whole  boy  and  not  his 
mind  alone,  and  which  leave  every  possible  opportunity  open 
to  the  boy  who  can  avail  himself  of  it  without  injury. 
Attitude  of  Parents 

The  parents,  if  they  influence  the  child  at  all,  in  rnore  than 
the  average  case  decide  in  the  interests  of  a  larger  family 
income.  In  a  well-defined  class  of  cases  I  have  found  that  the 
worst  offenders  against  the  children  are  their  own  parents, 
and    it    is    from    them    that    they    need    protection.     The    only 


62  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

protection  which  will  be  effective  against  this  particular  evil 
will  be  the  rigid  enforcement  of  educational  and  physical  re- 
strictions. Laws  prohibitive  as  to  age  will  not  aflfect  the 
parents  who  lie  about  their  children's  ages,  nor  prevent  them 
from  altering  and  forging  birth  certificates  in  a  way  that  would 
be  ludicrous  if  it  were  not  so  pitiful. 

The  percentage  of  cases  of  real  need  in  which  it  is  a  question 
between  self-support  and  town  aid  is  small,  not  over  fifteen  per 
cent.  In  principle  as  well  as  practice,  self-support,  if  attainable, 
is  better  than  town  aid  or  assistance  from  any  public  charity 
which  it  is  now  possible  to  give.  Perhaps  public  school  scholar- 
ships wisely  administered  may  ultimately  solve  the .  difficulty. 
They  are  not  available  now  to  any  extent.  But  until  the  con- 
dition of  actual  need  is  met,  you  are  committing  a  positive  in- 
jury in  depriving  this  class  of  children  of  their  only  opportunity 
to  find  a  way  out.  In  such  cases  the  school  ami  charity  authorities 
jointly  should  be  given  discretionary  authority  to  allow  a  child 
of  fourteen  years  to  go  to  work  or  to  he  supported  at  public 
charge.  But  of  greater  frequency  than  the  cases  of  extreme 
need  are  those  in  which  the  influence  of  the  parents,  without 
sufficient  necessity,  or  the  loyalty  of  the  child,  persuades  him  to 
assist  in  supporting  the  family.  The  total  of  such  cases  of 
both  kinds  is  perhaps  one-half  of  the  total  number  of  children 
who   leave  school  to  go  to  work. 

That  a  portion,  perhaps  large,  of  this  number  could  actually 
have  done  without  this  assistance,  does  not  seem  to  me  to  alter 
the  conclusions  that  if  j'ou  forbid  the  parents  to  make  the  chil- 
dren help  toward  their  own  support,  you  must  provide  an  al- 
ternative, which  in  the  long  run  will  make  a  continued 
parental  sacrifice  worth  while.  That  is,  you  must  be  able  to 
demonstrate  that  more  schooling  will  either  make  their  children 
higher  wage  earners  or  will  open  up  to  them  a  higher  social 
position. 

The  first  motive  will  appeal  more  powerfully  to  the  struggling 
families,  and  to  them  the  school  now  fails  admittedly  to  provide 
a  training  for  higher  efficiency.  The  second  motive,  social  posi- 
tion, your  school  can  enlist,  legitimately  in  some  intances,  un- 
wisely and  harmfully  in  a  great  majority  of  cases.  To  any  one 


CHILD   LABOR  63 

who  is  acquainted  with  our  schools  the  most  unnecessary  and 
pathetic  failures  are  where  parents  are  sacrificing  their  very 
lives  to  maintain  in  a  high  school  a  child  who  has  no  ability,  and 
cannot  even  conceive  the  value  of  the  opportunity  offered. 
Wherever  false  ideals  based  on  a  smattering  of  many  things, 
imperfectly  digested,  have  grown  in  place  of  trained  habits  of 
thought,  of  efficiency  and  diligence,  your  school  has  done  an 
injury  which  can  only  be  undone  by  bitter  experience  afterwards. 
Influence  of  the  School 

So  much  for  the  influence  of  parents.  If  they  do  not  compel 
or  strongly  advise  going  to  work,  what  influence  does  the  school 
have  on  the  child's  decision?  If  he  is  working  progressively,  it 
is  fair  to  assume  that  he  is  interested  and  would  like  to  stay  on. 
If  by  the  time  he  has  reached  the  age  of  fourteen  he  has  not 
passed  the  sixth  grade,  which  means  he  has  taken  eight  years  to 
do  the  work  which  should  have  been  done  in  five  or  six,  he  must 
have  lost  from  two  to  three  years  either  through  incapacity  or 
lack  of  interest.  As  we  are  c'oncerned,  in  this  discussion,  only 
with  those  children  who  do  go  to  work,  we  are  certainly  within 
the  truth  in  stating  that  not  over  a  third  of  those  at  work  can  do 
more  than  read  fluently,  write  fairly  legibly  and  perform  the  sim- 
pler processes  in  numbers,  including  common  fractions.  The 
average  child  who  goes  to  work  from  the  sixth  grade,  or  below, 
has  reached  the  limit  both  of  his  interest  and  his  capacity  to  ab- 
sorb what  is  put  before  him.  If  you  compel  him  to  stay  in  school, 
you  may  be  protecting  him  from  physical  and  moral  injury,  but 
you  have  done  nothing  to  positively  advance  him  upon  his  way, 
or  bridge  over  what  you  frequently  term  "the  two  wasted  years." 
It  is  possible  that  a  widespread  interest  in  industrial  training 
may  in  time  produce  a  school  which  will  meet  the  pressing  re- 
quirements, but  in  the  meanwhile  are  you  justified  in  advanc- 
ing the  age  limit  two  years  before  you  have  provided  an  adequate 
training  for  at  least  one-half  of  the  children  affected?  It  is  per- 
fectly true  that  in  the  past  schools  have  been  provided  much 
more  slowly  than  increases  of  population  demanded. 

I  know  that  I  am  laying  myself  open  to  your  criticism  in  sug- 
gesting a  compromise  between  the  fourteen-year-old  standard 
established  in  most  states  of  the  North  and  East  and  your  six- 


64.  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

teen-year  ideal  limit.  I  have  heard  you  describe  in  scathing 
terms  the  manufacturer  who  seeks  to  continue  his  exploitation 
of  child  labor  by  exaggerating  the  educational  shortcomings. 
But  fortunately  the  facts  need  no  exaggeration  to  make  them 
sufficiently  startling.  And  so  long  as  not  more  than  a  third  of 
your  laboring  children  are  advanced  beyond  the  sixth  grade  when 
they  go  to  work,  it  is  not  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  problem 
to  continue  them  in  such  a  school  for  two  years  longer. 
The  Need  in  Education 

In  agreement  with  Dr.  Draper,  I  believe  that  the  vital  need 
is  not  so  much  for  a  brand-new  style  of  education  as  for  im- 
proving and  intensifying  what  we  have.  I  am  out  of  patience 
with  many  of  the  students  of  industrial  training,  who  have  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  a  more  or  less  technical  training  for 
pupils  of  high  school  grade  is  going  to  meet  a  critical  condition 
caused  by  pupils  who  are  struggling  along  in  the  fourth,  fifth 
and  sixth  grade.  No  industrial  training  is  adequate  unless  it 
can  be  applied  to  the  earlier  grades.  Taking  these  grades  and 
the  ideals  which  govern  them,  what  are  the  foundations  on  which 
we  must  build? 

The  ideal  most  indelibly  stamped  upon  our  common  school  is 
that  they  are  to  provide  a  training,  admittedly  and  predominant- 
ly cultural,  which  is  to  open  the  door  of  opportunity  to  all  kinds 
and  conditions  of  people.  Our  free  American  schools  are  tn-* 
dividual  in  their  purpose  and  general  in  their  tendencies,  as  op- 
posed to  the  national  ideal  which  governs  the  German  schools  in 
the  development  of  specific  trainings  best  adapted  to  classes  of 
pupils.  The  German  literature  on  the  subject  which  has  been  so 
voluminously  laid  before  us  recently  is  most  interesting,  but  it 
can  only  tempt  us  out  of  our  plain  course,  so  far  as  definite  ap- 
plication of  it  goes.  We  are  not  ready  to  abandon  our  ideal  of 
a  cultural  training  as  the  best  highway  for  an  open  opportunity, 
and  we  could  not,  if  we  would,  force  a  separation  at  the  end  of 
our  elementary  schools  between  those  children  who  expect  to 
work  with  their  hands  and  those  who  expect  to  work  with  their 
heads.  The  experience  of  England  is  no  more  helpful  to  us, 
unless  it  is  an  example  of  how  not  to  work  out  the  part-time 
system.     We   can   obtain   valuable   suggestions   and   inspirations 


CHILD   LABOR  65 

from  the  fereign  systems,  but  to  make  real  progress  against  our 
own  difficulties  we  must  keep  our  feet  firmly  planted  in  Ameri- 
can traditions.  Frankly  accepting  the  fact  that  we  are  going  to 
demand  a  cultural  training,  which  seeks  to  open  one's  eyes  to  a 
wider  world  than  our  own,  we  must  direct  it  toward  efficiency 
and  deilniteness. 

We  must  endeavor  to  get  hold  of  our  raw  material,  to  use  a 
manufacturing  term,  at  an  earlier  age,  in  the  kindergarten  if 
possible,  which  should  have  a  more  definite  aim.  It  should  lay 
the  foundations  of  a  larger  vocabulary,  of  a  habit  of  doing  for 
oneself  rather  than  of  being  done  for  by  a  teacher;  of  simple, 
but  definite,  ideas  of  discipline  and  eff^ective  co-operation ;  of 
some  degree  of  concentration  and  thoroughness,  and  finally  of 
an'  elementary  power  of  expression  with  the  hands  as  well  as 
with  the  tongue.  Then  will  your  kindergarten  become  a  prep- 
aration for  the  primary  grades. 

In  the  elementary  school  no  new  direction  is  possible,  but  in 
our  own  case  we  have  been  able  to  secure  greater  efficiency  by 
smaller  subdivisions  and  more  exact  grading.  Here  the  classes 
are  flooded  with  foreigners. 

These  foreign  pupils  and  all  subnormal  children  must  be 
reached  at  an  earlier  age;  they  must  be  kept  moving  and  not 
allowed  to  stagnate.  This  can  only  be  done  in  smaller  classes 
and  more  specialized  work.  The  question  of  expense  will  be 
urged  against  all  this.  For  a  practical  mill  man  the  first  prin- 
ciple to  be  learned  is  the  economy  of  a  high  degree  of  comple- 
tion of  every  process  in  itself.  "Yarn  well  spun  is  nearly  warped 
and  a  warp  well  made  is  half  woven."  Do  you  school  men 
seriously  enough  consider  the  extravagance  and  waste,  both  of 
pupils  and  teachers,  in  half-taught  ideas  which  have  to  be  gone 
over  and  over  again,  each  time  with  an  added  danger  of  confu- 
sion and  uncertainty?  You  may  not  admit  any  parallel  between 
the  production  of  immaterial  ideas  or  brains  and  of  material 
things.  Yet  you  must,  as  teachers,  admit  the  unfairness  both 
to  dull  and  bright  pupils  of  the  waste  in  energy  and  time  caused 
by  large  classes  of  improperly  graded  children.  Perhaps  public 
parsimony  may  be  slow  in  recognizing  this  fact,  but  the  awaken- 
ing will  come  more  rapidly  if  you  lay  your  stress  on  the  greater 
efficiency  of  what  we  have. 


66  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Much,  too,  can  be  accomplished  in  securing  more  regular  at- 
tendance. The  practical  abolition  of  truancy  by  capable  truant 
officers  and  prosecution  of  parents ;  a  carefully  organized  system 
of  medical  inspection  and  efficient  nurses  who  treat  in  school 
many  minor  ailments  for  which  the  pupils  would  otherwise  have 
been  out,  and  an  intelligent  attention  to  securing  the  co-opera- 
tion of  parents,  I  know,  will  raise  an  average  attendance  of 
eighty-four  per  cent  to  ninety-two  per  cent.  This  would  make 
a  difference  of  about  a  half  a  year  in  the  time  the  average  child 
spends  in  school.  In  a  town  of  only  one  industry  and  one  school 
I  recognize  that  many  things  are  easy  of  accomplishment,  which 
in   a  city  would  be   impossible. 

Employ  only  efficient  teachers  and  pay  them  well.  Try  to  in- 
still a  spirit  of  enthusiasm  and  vigor,  even  at  a  greater  ex- 
penditure of  wages.  No  motives  of  consideration  justify  a  waste 
of  children  by  the  retention  of  teachers  who  have  outlived  their 
usefulness.  It  is  far  cheaper  to  pay  a  pension.  Too  great  rigid- 
ity and  conventionality  in  your  systems  of  promotions  make  for 
inefficiency,  so  far  as  it  insufficiently  rewards  exceptional  ability 
and   encourages   a   mediocrity   just   short   of   the   dismissal    line. 

Through  the  fifth  and  sixth  grades,  where  the  problems  of 
discipline  are  most  acute,  scatter  a  few  men.  Here  despite  all 
your  efforts  those  pupils  who  have  reached  the  limit  of  their 
ability  to  profit  by  cultural  training  will  begin  to  stagnate.  Re- 
spect for  a  man's  authority  is  more  than  moral  tonic.  It  is  re- 
specting the  boy's  developing  manhood.  You  cannot  hold  him 
by  methods  which  appeal  to  smaller  children.  With  undeveloped 
capacities  for  guidance  he  feels  a  man's  instincts,  which  must 
be  honored  and  satisfied.  In  no  way  more  legitimately  can  this 
be  done  than  by  giving  him  something  that  he  is  capable  of 
doing,  and  through  the  doing  of  which  under  a  man's  direction 
he  can  come  into  a  sense  of  his  own  power,  and  happiness  in 
his  own  usefulness.  Here  again  your  school  loses  in  power, 
because  it  has  not  studied  its  materials  and  intensified  its  proc- 
esses. 

I  am  conscious  that  some  of  you  are  thinking  that  I  am  treat- 
ing the  problem  just  as  if  the  children  were  so  many  different 
kinds  of  silk  and  the  teachers  were  so  many  operatives  and  fore- 


CHILD   LABOR  67 

man.  But  I  wish  I  could  make  you  appreciate  how  many  different 
kinds  of  good  and  bad  humanity  and  saintHness  and  cussedness 
can  be  expressed  in  a  piece  of  silk.  No  human  being  can  spend 
himself  upon  a  piece  of  work  without  putting  something  of  his 
humanity  into  it.  The  silk  dress  which  you  wear  contains  some 
indefinable  impression  of  the  old  Chinaman  who  tended  the 
worms  and  moths  more  tenderly  than  many  women  care  for  their 
babies;  something  of  the  Japanese  children  who  plucked  the 
mulberry  leaves  and  much  of  the  climate  of  the  particular  coun- 
try which  grew  those  leaves.  The  Italian  girls  who  reeled  the 
fibers  from  the  cocoons,  and  the  French  women  who  spun  the 
fine  strands  into  coarser  threads  have  added  their  individuality 
to  the  accumulating  problem  which  the  Yankee  mill  takes  up. 
If  you  think  we  add  nothing  further,  go  from  one  department 
to  another  and  observe  the  spirit  and  the  character  of  the 
room  as  affected  both  by  the  character  of  the  foreman  and  the 
hands ;  or  better  still,  go  from  mill  to  mill  to  study  the  effect  of 
the  controlling  organization.  Think,  as  you  hurry  along  in  con- 
fused ignorance,  of  the  art  of  the  designer,  the  dyer,  the  printer 
and  mechanic,  no  less  than  the  skill  of  the  thrower,  of  the  quil- 
ler,  warper,  weaver  and  finisher. 

Try  to  conceive  of  the  brain  matter  that  has  gone  into  the 
improved  machinery — and  it  is  not  the  great  discoveries  but  the 
many  little  improvements  that  seem  so  simple  you  wonder  they 
were  ever  problems,  which  make  for  rapid  progress.  Do  not 
stand  like  dummies  asking  what  a  machine  is  doing,  only  to  be 
told  that  the  product  goes  in  so  on  this  side  and  comes  out  so 
on  that ;  but  try  to  get  hold  of  some  part  of  the  human  wits  that 
have  gone  into  the  development  of  that  particular  process. 
You  may  not  understand  the  process  any  better,  but  you  must 
come  into  the  renewed  sense  of  the  culture  of  work,  however 
mechanical. 

Efficiency  in  the  school  is  directly  related  to  efficiency  in  the 
mill.  Culture  in  the  mill  is  the  same  thing  as  culture  in  the 
school.  Whoever  puts  something  of  himself  into  a  task  is  on  the 
way  to  attain  unto  culture,  and  whoever  has  taken  something 
out  of  a  task  and  made  it  his  own  attainment  is  cultured  to 
that  extent,  whether  it  be  in  literature  or  weaving.  The  problem 


68  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

that  is  before  us  is  not  to  discover  some  mysterious  and 
physiological  connection  between  the  hand  and  the  brain.  It  is 
to  find  means  whereby  the  child  can  express  himself  accurately, 
efficiently,  and  with  a  comprehension  of  what  he  is  doing.  Hand 
work  is  to  many  a  child  the  easiest  and  readiest  means  of  ex- 
pression. If  accuracy  and  efficiency  results  from  it,  by  so  much 
will  culture,  or  power  to  command  expression  follow.  You 
have  in  your  present  feebly-organized  manual  training  most  of 
the  equipment  necessary.  Do  not  be  afraid  to  use  it  under  the 
direction  of  an  enthusiastic  mechanic  and  rest  assured  that  the 
boy  will  discover  its  meaning  without  the  aid  of  philosophy  and 
psychology. 

I  have  taken  all  the  time  allotted  me  to  carry  you  to  my  point 
which  is  that  if  your  grammar  schools  can  attain  that  degree  of 
efficiency  which  will  have  carried  boys  and  girls  who  expect  to 
work  through  the  sixth  grade,  then  and  not  till  then  can  you 
guarantee  the  preparation  which  is  necessary  for  a  proper  indus- 
trial school.  In  brief,  stress  laid  not  so  much  on  the  things  done 
as  on  the  way  in  which  they  are  done ;  on  culture  as  the  power 
to  see,  think  and  act  in  the  experience  of  childhood,  rather  than 
on  culture  as  the  accumulation  of  ideas  however  valuable,  will 
best  lay  the  foundations  of  the  industrial  school  of  the  future. 
And  if  that  industrial  school  can  teach  mechanical  expression 
rather  than  exact  trades,  it  will  become  an  ideal  stepping  stone 
to  an  efficient  trade  school. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33:  Sup.   104-10. 
March,  1909. 

Effects  of  Improper  Posture  in  Factory  Labor. 
Albert  H.  Freiberg. 

I  think  that  in  any  discussion  of  the  physical  effects  of  pre- 
mature employment,  it  is  unnecessary  to  discuss  the  effect  of 
employment  upon  children  younger  than  ten  years  of  age.  I  be- 
lieve that  it  is  generally  granted  that  children  under  ten  years  of 
age  ought  not  to  have  to  work  in  factories  for  a  living.  It  is  like- 
v.ise    pretty    generally    acknowledged    that    such    early    employ- 


CHILD   LABOR  69 

ment  cannot  but  result  very  unfortunately  to  these  children 
physically. 

On  the  other  hand  the  important  ages  to  study  with  reference 
to  the  physical  effects  of  premature  employment  are  the  years 
between  twelve  and  eighteen;  the  years  of  adolescence,  -that 
space-ef-lif€^atJout  which  there^is  some  discussion  with  regard 
to  legal  enactment,  concerning  which  there  is  some  difference  of 
opinion  even  among  those  who  are  interested  in  children  and  who 
are  striving  in  their  behalf ;  differences  as  to- whether  a  child 
should  be  permitted  to  work  at  twelve  or  at  fourteen  or  at  six- 
teen. 

During  the  period  between  twelve  and  eighteen  years  we 
have  to  deal  with  physical  and  mental  changes  in  the  individual 
which  are  of  enormous  importance,  and  which  are  recognized 
by  everyone  to  be  so  physiologically;  a  period  which  is  fraught 
with  great  dangers  to  the  child,  dangers  mental,  moral  and  phys- 
ical;  a  period  during  which  the  child  grows  more  rapidly  in 
length  than  at  any  other  time  save  that  of  early  infancy;  a 
period  during  which,  because  of  the  sexual  development  going 
on  at  this  time,  the  child's  nervous  system  is  almost  turned 
topsy-turvy.  In  many  cases  it  is  turned  topsy-turvy  and  at  this 
time  the  child  is  peculiarly  open  to  external  influences  of  both 
moral  and  physical  character. 

There  is  a  vast  difference  between  the  work  which  a  child's 
muscles  do  in  factory  employment  and  the  work  which  that  child 
will  do  if  he  is  allowed  to  go  freely  as  he  chooses.  A  child 
between  the  ages  of  twelve  and  sixteen  or  eighteen  years  will, 
if  given  the  opportunity,  play  and  play  hard.  He  will  play  base- 
ball, play  football,  and  he  will  use  his  muscles  most  energetically. 
He  will  take  great  delight  in  using  his  muscles  in  a  gymnasium 
if  he  is  given  the  opportunity.  Therefore  we  are  told  by  many 
who  employ  children  or  who  would  like  to  employ  children  at 
this  age,  that  they  are  not  using  their  muscles  to  any  greater  ex- 
tent than  they  would  use  them  if  they  were  given  simply  that 
to  do  which   they  would  choose  to  do,   meaning  thereby  play. 

Muscular  excercise  is  beneficial.  Exercise  is  our  only  means 
of  strengthening  the  muscles,  of  encouraging  their  develop- 
ment, but  the  building  up  of  a  muscle  which  is  actively  growing 


70  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

and  developing  must  be  accomplished  by  exercises  which  are  not 
too  severe,  which  are  not  too  long  continued  and  which  are  of 
constantly  varying  character. 

Furthermore,  the  muscle  which  carries  out  exercises  must 
be  given  frequent  periods  of  rest,  during  which  it  may  recover; 
it  should  be  given  an  opportunity  to  build  up  again  that  which 
has  been  consumed  by  use. 

What  happens  when  a  child  is  employed  in  a  factory?  The 
child  is  employed  in  a  factory  as  rule  in  one  of  two  ways ;  either 
in  a  standing  or  in  sitting  occupation.  Sometimes  the  character 
of  the  occupation  is  such  as  to  combine  the  evil  effects  of  both 
these  positions. 

Such  a  situation  has  been  made  clear  to  me  in  the  illustration 
which  Doctor  McKelway  gave  with  reference  to  the  occupation 
of  children  at  looms  in  the  cotton  mills.  The  child  at  the  loom 
stands  and  sits  at  once,  as  it  were,  because  he  must  stand  in  one 
place  continuously  for  a  long  period  of  time  in  order  to  control 
the  operation  of  the  machine,  and  at  the  same  time  he  must  keep 
close  to  his  work  in  order  that  this  may  be  possible.  Thus  are 
combined  the   unfortunate   effects  of  both   sitting  and   standing. 

That  which  is  unfortunate  in  factory  employment  as  far  as 
purely  physical  effects  upon  the  muscles  are  concerned,  is  the 
fact  that  a  muscle  must  perform  its  functions  for  a  long  period 
of  time  without  the  opportunity  of  relaxing,  without  the  oppor- 
tunity of  recovering.  When  a  muscle  has  performed  its  func- 
tion up  to  a  certain  point,  we  experience  the  sensation  which 
we  speak  of  commonly  as  fatigue.  Fatigue  means  that  there  is 
an  accumulation  in  the  muscle  of  the  waste  products  of  its  use, 
which  have  not  yet  been  carried  away  and  replaced  by  new  mate- 
rial. If  we  continue  to  use  a  muscle  far  beyond  the  point  of 
fatigue  repeatedly,  there  results  in  that  muscle  in  the  course  of 
time  instead  of  further  upholding,  a  degeneration  and  the  re- 
sult of  such  excess  fatigue  is  the  final  weakening  of  a  muscle 
which,  if  treated  properly,  would  on  the  contrary  grow  stronger 
continuously.  The  result  is  that  we  find  the  children  who  are 
thus  unable  to  change  their  position  to  relieve  their  over-tired 
muscles,  taking  peculiar  positions  which  at  first  we  call  bad 
habits.     We   speak  of  the  child  that  has  round  shoulders,    for 


K 


CHILD   LABOR  71 

example,  as  habitually  holding  himself  badly.  Why  does  he 
hold  himself  badly?  Simply  because  his  muscles  are  not  capable 
of  holding  him  in  a  proper  position,  in  what  we  call  a  normal 
position.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  slouchy  habit  of  mind,  either ; 
it  is  a  question  of  muscular  weakness. 

So  with  the  child  sitting  at  the  machine,  so  with  the  child 
standing  at  the  work  bench  continuously  for  periods  varying 
from  six  to  eight  or  nine  hours  a  day.  It  is  the  lack  of  oppor- 
tunity to  relax,  the  lack  of  opportunity  for  these  muscles  to  gain, 
within  a  resonable  length  of  time,  what  has  been  used  up,  which 
causes  degeneration  to  take  place,  which  causes  this  weakened 
condition  to  take  place,  and  by  reason  of  this  weakened  condi- 
tion, certain  postures  which  are  abnormal  and  which  will  de- 
velop into  deformity. 

At  af former  conference  of  the- National  Child  Labor  Commit- 
tgg"f(  sircwrt  to  show\how  premature  employment  in  standing 
positions  tends  to  produce  postural  deformities  of  the  feet ;  how 
sitting  employment  in  young  children  tends  to  cause  distortions 
of  the  spine  and  chest,  and  to  what  extent  the  conditions  thus 
produced  are  likely  to  interfere  with  future  industrial  efficiency, 
as  well  as  future  health  and  chances  for  a  normal  tenure  of 
life.  It  is  not  necessary  to  revert  to  these  questions  further 
at  this  time,  but  it  seems  well  to  mention  them,  and  to  call  at- 
tention to  the  importance  of  the  matters  involved. 

Consensus  of  opinion  among  medical  men  is  that  the  period 
of  adolescence  is  of  critical  importance  for  the  individual,  both 
mentally  and  physically.  For  me  the  physical  condition  of 
children  has  been  of  primary  interest  from  a  professional  view- 
point. As  before  remarked,  even  if  it  could  be  shown  that  what 
we  call  premature  toil  was  not  injurious  to  the  physical  organism 
of  the  child,  there  would  still  be  ample  ground,  both  economic 
and  humanitarian,   why  such  employment  should  be  forbidden. 

Nevertheless  it  is  highly  important  to  seek  definite  infor- 
mation respecting  the  physical  effect  of  such  employment  and 
for  two  reasons.  The  more  important  of  these  in  my  judg- 
ment concerns  us  the  less  in  the  purposes  of  this  conference,, 
since  it  advocates  an  investigation  into  the  matter  purely  as  a 
contribution    to    medical    knowledge.      As    such    a    contribution,. 


K.^ 


72  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

however,  an  inquiry  of  magnitude  would  assume  g^^reat  impor- 
tance and  would  be  likely  to  lend  a  determinative  influence  of 
great  value  to  certain  theories  at  present  contending  for  proof, 
proof  hitherto  lacking  because  of  the  impossibility  of  carrying 
on  an  inquiry  of  such  scope  under  private  auspices. 

It  is  held  by  some  that  the  marked  deformities  of  adoles- 
cence, such  as  lateral  curvature  of  the  spine  and  the  severe  de- 
formities of  the  feet  appearing  at  this  time,  cannot  be  produced 
by  occupation  or  habit  without  the  existence  of  structural  weak- 
ness or  disease  of  the  bones  of  antecedent  character.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  maintained  that  such  deformities  may  result 
from  overtaxing  the  muscular  system  alone,  during  this  period 
when  growth  and  development  may  be  considered  the  principal 
functions  of  the  body.  If  we  could  have  such  an  investigation, 
it  would  be  most  important  in  its  results,  I  am  sure. 

Whether  deformities  of  children  develop  as  the  result  of 
very  unfortunate  or  improper  employment,  depends  on  a  number 
of  factors.  Not  every  child  who  is  employed  too  early  in  life  or 
in  an  improper  manner  develops  deformity.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  highly  probable  that  a  comparatively  small  proportion  of 
them  develops  deformity.  But  in  speaking  of  the  physical  effect 
of  premature  employment,  we  are  not  dealing  with  deformities 
alone,  but  with  the  damage  to  the  child's  general  organism  as 
well. 

To  begin  with,  children  come  to  their  employment  with 
various  abnormal  conditions  already  existing.  They  come  suf- 
fering from  mal-nutrition  as  the  result  of  insufficient  or  im- 
proper food  at  home.  They  come  with  the  traces  of  former 
disease  of  the  bones,  such  as  rickets,  and  of  tuberculosis  and 
of  inherited  diseases.  They  come  after  having  been  employed 
to  an  excessive  extent  in  their  homes,  or  having  been  given 
improper  work  in  their  homes,  or  having  been  confined  to  their 
homes  to  an  undue  extent.  These  things,  all  of  them,  lead 
up  to  the  postural  deformities,  which  develop  during  the  course 
of  their  employment,  and  these  deformities  may  be  present  and 
in  formation  when  they  come.  However,  this  is  to  be  remem- 
bered, that  a  spine  which  has  started  to  become  crooked,  that  has 
begun  to  weaken,  and  a  chest  which  has  not  developed  to  the 


CHILD   LABOR  73 

normal  extent  may  be  likened  to  a  nail  slightly  bent.  It  may 
seem  strong  enough  when  you  look  at  it,  it  may  seem  strong 
enough  when  you  try  to  bend  it  with  your  fingers,  but  put  it 
under  the  hammer  and  instead  of  going  into  the  wood  it  bends 
still  more.  This  is  precisely  what  happens  to  these  unfortunate 
children  when  they  are  placed  in  the  unfavorable  environment 
of  factories  and  workshops,  and  at  a  time  when  their  growth 
and    development   are    not   yet   complete. 

We  have  heard  much  of  the  influence  of  the  school  on  the 
organism  of  the  child.  A  great  deal  has  been  said  and  written 
on  the  subject.  It  is  granted,  I  think,  by  schoolmasters  every- 
where and  by  others  who  have  given  the  subject  careful  study, 
that  the  school  very  often  has  an  exceedingly  unfortunate  in- 
fluence on  the  physique  of  the  child.  It  is  said  to  be  exceedingly 
important  that  the  child  should  have  the  right  kind  of  desk  and 
the  right  kind  of  light.  But  remember  that  children  in  the 
poorest  school  are  under  no  such  unfortunate  circumstances  as 
the  child  is  in  the  workshop  or  the  factory.  The  child  at  school 
changes  his  occupation  at  least  once  an  hour,  during  which  time 
he  has  an  opportunity  of  relaxing  somewhat,  or  moving  about. 
He  has  an  interval  usually  in  the  midst  of  his  tasks  for  some 
physical  diversion.  The  hygienic  conditions  of  even  a  poor  school 
are  much  better,  it  seems  to  me,  than  the  hygienic  conditions  in 
the  best  of  workshops,  so  long  as  a  child  must  spend  nine  or 
ten  hours  a  day,  or  even  eight  hours  a  day,  at  work  with 
only  the  lunch  hour  as  an  opportunity  for  diversion  and  re- 
laxation. 

A  comparison  of  the  agricultural  child  with  the  child  in  the 
factory  or  workshop  has  been  made,  and  curiously  enough  it 
was  a  thing  to  which  I  had  meant  to  give  some  considera- 
tion. It  seems  to  me  that  the  advantage  is  all  upon  the  side 
of  the  child  on  the  farm,  even  though  he  work  ever  so  hard.  I 
shall  not  go  into  the  details  of  this  question.  They  were  very 
fully  entered  into  just  a  few  moments  ago  and  much  better  than 
I  could  do.  but  I  have  this  to  say  about  this  phase  of  the  matter ; 
that  it  is  common  knowledge  that  many  of  our  most  prominent 
men,  not  only  a  few,  but  a  great  many  of  them,  have  come 
from   the   farm,   and   they   themselves   have   told    us   how   hard 


74  SELFXTED    ARTICLES 

they  worked,  how  unfortunate  were  some  of  the  conditions 
under  which  they  worked.  But  these  conditions  seem  to  have 
done  nothing  more  for  these  men  than  to  give  them  a  rugged 
physique  and  give  them  opportunity  for  mental  development 
which  has  enabled  them   to  rise   above  their   fellows. 

Where  are  the  graduates  of  the  factories?  I  have  not  come 
across  them  in  literature,  science,  art  or  politics.  And  I  do  not 
believe  that  they  are  there  to  be  found  to  an  extent  at  all  con- 
siderable. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33:   Sup.   122-30. 
March,  1909. 

Handicaps  in  Later  Years  from   Child  Labor. 
William  E.   Harmon. 

My  own  consideration  of  the  problem,  which  has  extended 
over  a  number  of  years  and  in  various  parts  of  the  country,  has 
convinced  me  that  excessive  toil  under  the  most  healthful  condi- 
tions between  the  ages  of  twelve  and  sixteen,  or  that  any  toil 
during  this  period  which  precludes  an  equivalent  development 
of  the  intellect,  results  in  an  arrest  of  the  normal  growth  of  the 
brain;  a  replacement  of  functional  with  connective  tissue  or 
neuroglia.  It  reduces  permanently  the  mental  capacity  of  the 
individual,  reflecting  itself  subsequently  by  the  loss  of  ambition, 
of  will  power,  the  power  of  concentration,  of  extended  mental 
effort. 

An  investigation  made  to  determine  the  correctness  of  this 
hypothesis  may  proceed  along  three  Hues: 

1.  In  the  study  of  families  of  children  where  exactly  the  same 
conditions  of  living  exist,  but  in  which  certain  of  the  children 
have  the  opportunity  for  mental  development,  while  the  others 
are  deprived  of  it  through  work.  A  study  of  this  type  of  case,  if 
sufficiently  extended,  would  prove  beyond  dispute  the  truth  of 
the  proposition  herein  presented — if  it  be  true. 

2.  A  study  of  the  children  sent  from  institutions  for  adoption. 
If  the  intellectual  achievements  of  the  children  of  adoption,  in  a 
large  percentage  of  cases,  were  greatly  beyond  those  of  the  re- 
mainder of  the  family,  the  evidence  would  tend  strongly  to  the 


CHILD   LABOR  75 

validity  of  the  proposition.  The  advantage  here  is.  that  the 
material  is  easily  accessible,  although  the  results  are  not  so 
conclusive. 

•    3.  The  third  line  of  investigation  would  be  to  make  a  compara- 
tive study  between  the  relative  accomplishments  of  parents  and 
children.     It  is  reasonable  to  assume  that  the  natural  capacity  of 
the  child  and  his  parents  is  about  equal,  and  if  the  inability  of 
the  parent,  through  toil  in  childhood,  to  secure  an  education,  has 
resulted  in  a  serious  handicap  in  later  years,  when  compared  with 
his   children,   to   whom,   by   self-sacrifice,   he   has   given    proper 
opportunities,  it  is  at  least  presumable  that  the  labor  itself  has 
had  to  do  with  the  case. 
Early  Employment  vs.  Opportunity  for  Mental  Development 
For  many  years*I  have  been  interested  in  this  question,  parti- 
cularly in  many  country  districts  of  the  United  States.    I  have 
seen  instances  where  whole  families,  except  perhaps  one  member, 
were    raised    under    conditions    involving    severe    physical    labor 
during  youth,  and  I   have   noted  the  subsequent  history  of  the 
family,   the   fortunate   child   pursuing   an   even    and   continuous 
career  of  advancement,  while  his  brothers,   not  only  were  left 
behind,    but    went    on    through    life   unstimulated    by    ambition 
for  betterment.     I  have  seen  fellow  playmates  at  twelve  years 
of  age  equally  bright,  part  intellectually,  never  to  meet  again, 
by    reason    of   one    being    committed   to   a    few   years    of   hard 
labor,    while    the    other    pursued    his    onward    course,    growing 
I       intelk<;tuallv  ias   he   grew  ,phy^sically.     ^    ^  <-^\ 
UCr~^^  Have  Watclie^'tne  Individual   working  child  at  eight,  ten 
J  and  twelve  years,  bright  eyes,   face  full  of  latent   intelligence; 
i   at  fourteen  his  eyes  begin  to  deaden,  his  face  becomes  heavy;  at 
sixteen  much  of  the  light  of  intelligence  has  passed  out,  and  he 
gazes  on  the  world  in  the  quite  open-eyed  manner  of  the  mentally 
.  deficient — his  ambition  gone,  his  powers  of  rejuvenation  vanished. 
The  Changes  in  Environment 
With  regard  to  the  second  type  of  cases,  those  children  re- 
moved from  a  limited  to  a  broader  environment — by  adoption, — I 
have  for  some  time  been  interested  in  providing  homes  of  adop- 
tion for  the  children  of  indigent  parents.    These  children  natur- 


76  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

ally  secure  many  advantages  in  their  new  homes,  and  it  has 
been  easy  to  follow  their  careers,  and  even  to  learn  some- 
thing of  their  brothers  and  sisters.  A  relative  of  mine  has 
been  engaged  in  the  investigation  of  children  of  this  type, 
who  have  been  already  placed  in  homes. 

The  general  opinion  of  those  with  whom  I  have  consulted, 
such  men  as  Homer  Folks  and  Charles  Loring  Brace,  and  my 
own  observations  lead  me  to  believe  that  the  career  of  the  child 
of  adoption  is  much  the  same  as  that  of  the  other  children  of 
the  family  into  which  he  or  she  is  adopted,  and  in  many  instances 
is  marked  with  great  success,  while  the  other  children,  who  re- 
main with  their  parents  because  they  are  sufficiently  advanced 
in  years  to  help  support  the  family,  have  been  little  better  than 
their  indigent  parents.  « 

Relative  Achievement  of  Parents  and  Children 

The  third  class  of  cases  which  I  have  investigated,  and  regard- 
ing which  I  advise  study,  involve  the  relative  achievements  of 
parent  and  child.  It  is  here  the  question  becomes  an  intimate  one, 
touching  our  own  lives.  We  are  surrounded  by  living  illustra- 
tions of  the  injury  of  child  labor  in  our  own  ancestry,  either 
direct  or  collateral. 

The  winning  of  the  West  was  a  heroic  achievement,  and 
yet,  it  had  its  pric©  in  the  limitation  of  intellectual  development 
in  most  of  our  grandfathers  and  great-grandfathers.  I  am  not 
contending  that  there  were  no  compensatory  advantages  in  the 
development  of  the  physical  qualities  of  courage  and  endurance 
to  which  we  owe  greatly  our  present  day  success.  I  merely 
assert  that,  with  the  generation  itself,  there  were  limitations  im- 
posed which  absolutely  precluded  the  men  of  the  time  from  such 
acquirements  as  to-day  are  open  to  those  without  the  intellectual 
handicap.  Ulysses  S.  Grant  became  President  of  the  United 
grandfather,  could  neither  have  occupied  that  exalted  position 
States,  but  Jesse  Grant,  the  tanner  and  contemporary  of  my  own 
nor  any  other  of  great  importance. 

The  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln  is  an  exemplification  of  the  possi- 
bility of  achievement  under  extreme  conditions,  but  in  Abraham 
Lincoln  we  find  an  individual  of  great  physical  strength,  on 
whose   vitality   ordinary   tasks    made   no    impression,    and    who. 


CHILD   LABOR  T7 

through  the  influence  of  a  neighbor,  absorbed  early  a  love  of 
books  and  learning.  Had  Abraham  Lincoln's  labor  been  meas- 
ured by  his  strength  until  he  reached  his  sixteenth  year,  it  is 
quite  possible  that  the  world  would  never  have  been  enriched  by 
the  life  contribution  of  the  Great  Emancipator.  The  present 
generation  is  one  with  which  we  have  to  deal  and  the  present 
day  requirements  are  not  those  of  the  pioneer.  The  problems 
we  meet  are  those  requiring  intellectual  equipment.  Those  of 
the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  required  largely  physi- 
cal strength. 

I  am  familiar  with  the  South  where  the  ante-bellum  farming 
aristocracy  and  the  lower  whites  are  equally  poor.  We  see  in 
our  cities  the  "unsubmerged  tenth";  those  who,  by  the  sacrifice 
of  family,  or  extraordinary  virility  and  ambition,  have  been  en- 
abled to  gain  a  start;  but  you  can  travel  among  the  plantations 
of  Virginia,  North  and  South  Carolina  and  find  hundreds  of 
families  of  the  best  type  and  heredity  where  poverty  has  been  so 
extreme  as  to  require  the  constant  toil  of  the  children;  and 
wherever  you  find  it,  almost  invariably  the  marks  of  mental 
arrest  are  distinctly  evident.  I  have  traveled  through  the  moun- 
tain districts  of  Kentucky,  Tennessee  and  West  Virginia,  where 
the  stock  is  pure.  American  for  generations  back,  but  where 
child  labor  is  almost  universal,  and  where  the  educational 
impulse  has  scarcely  touched  the  people.  Here  the  sign  of  or- 
ganic degeneracy  is  well-nigh  universal. 

To  all  of  us  the  investigation  of  this  class  of  cases  is  an  easy 
one,  and  if  we  will  but  give  the  matter  serious  thought,  I  am 
convinced  that  the  evil  of  child  labor  itself,  removed  from  any 
other  correlative  influences,  will  be  apparent.  We  have  but  to 
look  about  us  to  trace  the  history  of  families  in  our  own  com- 
munity; in  fact,  to  study  ourselves,  in  many  instances,  to  find 
wherein  the  excessive  work  of  our  fathers  and  forefathers  has 
handicapped  us  In  the  exercise  of  the  finer  Intellectual  and  ar- 
tistic faculties  which  we  feel  sure  are  potentially  resident  within 
us.  This  brings  the  problem  into  our  own  households — this 
makes  the  evil  cry  with  a  near  voice  and  imposes  a  task  on  us 
on  behalf  of  our  own  posterity. 


78  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

Independent.   6i:   748-50.    September   27,    1906. 

Child  Labor  and  Family  Disintegration.  Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 

We  doubt  the  efficiency  of  pity  to  solve  the  problem  of  child 
labor.  A  certain  value  is  derived  from  pictures  of  the  bent 
shoulders,  the  contracted  lungs,  the  tired  limbs,  the  sallow  faces, 
the  vacant  eyes  and  the  dwarfed  intellects  of  those  we  are  ban- 
ishing from  home,  playground  and  schoolroom  to  the  weary 
tread  of  our  sweats-shops,  factories  and  mines.  But  not  all  child 
laborers  are  "slaves."  Those  who  denounce  the  evils  of  child 
labor  in  such  generalizations  as  that  'two  million  little,  wan  and 
dwarfed  child  toilers  march  in  the  wage  slave  ranks  of  Amer- 
ica's industrial  army"  are  a  menace  to  this  reform.  Intelligent 
people,  seeing  many  of  these  two  million  children  who  are  not 
"wan"  or  "dwarfed,"  and  who  bear  no  other  visible  marks  of 
slavery,  discount  the  whole  cry  against  child  labor  as  a  senti- 
ment. Many  of  the  two  million  working  children  in  America  are 
between  fifteen  and  sixteen  years  of  age  and  are  in  occupations 
and  laboring;  under  conditions  not  injurious  to  themselves-  or  to 
society.  Not  all  glass  houses  employ  little  boys  at  night.  Not 
all  coal  breakers  are  dense  with  clouds  of  dry  dust.  Not  all 
telegraph  offices  employ  little  children  to  carry  messages  at 
midnight  to  houses  of  vice.  Not  all  children  in  Southern  cotton 
mills  work  through  a  twelve-hour  night.  Some  one  tells  of 
seeing  a  little  girl  in  a  Southern  cotton  mill  rudely  awakened 
at  night  by  a  dash  of  cold  water  in  her  face.  Homilies  on  child 
labor  followed  this  incident,  abounding  in  graphic  descriptions  of 
numberless  little  girls  cruelly  awakened  night  after  night  by 
splashes   of   cold   water. 

Nothing  is  gained  by  exaggeration ;  much  is  lost.  It  is  enough 
that  some  of  the  two  .million  are  toiling  all  night  in  glass 
houses;  that  some  coal  breakers  compel  little  boys  of  ten  years 
to  work  in  clouds  of  dust  so  dense  as  to  completely  hide  the 
light  and  fill  the  lungs;  that  some  little  girls  of  eight  years  toil 
through  a  twelve-hour  night  in  Southern  cotton  mills;  that 
some  of  the  little  children  of  New  York  are  crushed  in  body 
and  soul  in  the  slavery  of  sweat-shop  labor.  The  truth   is  bad 


CHILD    LABOR  79 

enough.  Let  the  picture  be  drawn  with  simple  accuracy,  and  we 
may  hope  to  arouse,  instead  of  sentiments  of  pity,  the  sense  of 
social  justice;  an  appreciation  of  the  relation  of  this  system  to 
OUT  social  institutions.  A  demonstration  of  the  loss  to  society, 
the  injustice  to  the  laborer,  and  the  dwarfing  of  the  progen- 
itors of  our  coming  generations,  will  be  more  effective  than 
specific  pictures  of  little  children  who  suffer  from  the  wrong. 

The  fact  that  the  volume  of  child  labor  is  increasing  in 
America  becomes  especially  significant  when  we  consider  the 
effect  of  the  system  upon  that  most  fundamental  of  our  social 
institutions — the  family. 

In  the  twenty  years  preceding  1900,  while  the  population  of 
our  country  increased  50  per  cent.,  the  number  of  boys  between 
the  ages  of  ten  and  fifteen  who  were  placed  in  our  shops  and 
factories  increased  100  per  cent.,  and  the  number  of  girls  be- 
tween the  same  ages  and  in  the  same  occupations  increased 
150  per  cent.  We  have  all  reason  to  believe  the  increase  since 
1900  has  more  rapid  than  before.  New  York  official  reports  show 
an  increase  of  38  per  cent,  between  1898  and  1903.  Pennsylvania 
shows  an  increase  among  factory  children  of  25  per  cent,  in 
the  single  year  1904.  The  boys  working  in  the  hard  coal 
breakers  of  that  State  under  fourteen  years  of  age  number 
not  les^  than  12,000,  and  in  the  soft  coal  mines  under  sixteen 
not  less  than  10,000,  tho  thru  defects  in  the  State  law  none  of 
these  facts  are  officially  known.  Iowa  has  increased  her  army 
of  working  children  2^2  per  cent,  in  six  years.  The  census  re- 
ports of  1900  return  24,000  children  in  Southern  cotton  mills. 
There  are  estimated  today  not  less  than  60,000 — many  of  them 
eight  and  nine  years  old  and  many  of  them  working  twelve  hours 
at  night  every  alternate  week. 

Whatever  the  historical  causes  of  its  development,  we  have 
come  to  regard  the  family — one  father,  one  mother,  a  group  of 
children  to  be  fed,  clothed  and  educated  during  the  years  that 
precede  maturity — as  the  fundamental  institution  of  our  civiliza- 
tion and  the  glory,  thus  far,  of  all  social  evolution.  One  of  the 
causes  out  of  which  the  family  grew  has  direct  bearing  upon 
our  subject — that  to  which  Professor  Fiske  called  attention  as 
his  chief  contribution  to  the  evolutionary  theory — the  lengthened 


8o  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

period  of  infancy.  The  evolutionary  trend  has  been  to  prolong 
infancy  and  adolescence,  and  thus  to  launch  upon  society  better 
individuals. 

The  tendency  of  modern  industry  is  to  reverse  this  process 
Up  to  the  time  of  the  introduction  of  our  present  industrial 
system  the  home  was  the  factory  and  men  and  women  shared 
the  manufacture  of  the  articles  of  the  world's  consumption.  The 
consumer  was  then  in  large  part  the  manufacturer  as  well.  The 
child  undoubtedly  shared  in  the  lighter  forms  of  such  industries, 
but  the  group  with  which  he  worked  was  most  often  composed 
of  the  other  members  of  his  own  family  While  his  work  had 
an  economic  value,  even  if  the  article  produced  was  .for  home 
consumption,  its  chief  value  was  that  which  we  regard  as  accru- 
ing from  manual  training. 

Under  proper  conditions  the  transfer  of  manufacturing  from 
the  home  to  the  factory  should  have  resulted  in  incalculable 
gain  to  the  world,  for  women — no  longer  under  the  necessity  of 
being  the  textile  workers,  the  fuel  gatherers,  the  soap  and  candle 
makers — would  have  been  free  to  set  in  motion  great  influences 
for  the  intellectual  and  ethical  development  of  the  race.  With 
the  rapid  utilization  of  such  mechanical  devices  as  lift  the 
heavier  burdens  from  human  shoulders  and  lay  them  on 
shoulders  of  iron  and  steel,  leaving  the  human  laborer  to 
guide  the  machine,  and  increasing  the  speed  of  production  a 
hundredfold  or  more,  the  father  in  the  family  should  have 
found  his  earning  capacity  tremendously  increased.  A  rational 
expectation  would  have  prophesied  that  he  could  not  only  singly 
provide  maintenance  and  secure  leisure  for  himself  and  the 
mother  for  higher  undertakings,  but  that  together  they  could 
prolong  the  years  of  education  for  their  children,  thus  sending 
them  into  life  better  trained  for  social  service. 

.  What  we  actually  find  is  the  direct  reverse.  The  ignorant, 
the  weak,  the  inefficient,  the  little  children  are  profitably  sub- 
stituted for  stalwart  men.  The  wife  and  the  child  enter  the 
factory  and  other  wage-earning  industries,  not  to  assist  the 
father  in  earning  a  livelihood,  but  rather  to  compete  with  him 
and  drag  his  wages  down. 

The   words   of   a   Southern   mother   contained   a   volume   of 


CHILD   LABOR  8i 

economic  philosophy  of  which  she  was  quite  ignorant,  as  she 
said  to  me  a  few  weeks  ago,  "The  cotton  mill  is  a  mighty  nice 
thing,  'cause  a  right  little  girl  can  make  as  much  rnoney  as  a  big 
one."  The  "much  money"  referred  to  was  from  i8  to  40  cents 
a  day.  This  mother  has  six  children  working  in  the  mill  while 
she  works  both  at  factory  and  home.  The  father's  precarious 
employment  yields  only  enough  to  pay  for  his  personal  main- 
tenance. 

The  result  of  this  modern  revolution  in  the  problem  of  wage- 
earning  has  been  a  reduction  of  individual  wages  (compared 
with  living  expenses)  from  an  amount  sufficient  to  maintain  a 
family  as  the  unit  in  society  to  an  amount  sufficient  only  to  main- 
tain an  individual  as  the  unit.  Thus  we  are  developing  that  ex- 
aggerated individualism  which  seeks  to  destroy  even  the  mutual 
interdependence  of  the  home  and  hurls  into  the  face  of  the  baby 
that  ancient  edict,  "He  that  will  not  work  neither  shall  he  eat!" 

Viewed  from  the  economic  point  alone  we  see  its  seriousness 
in  the  tendency  to  depress  wages  and  dissolve  the  home  into  its 
constituent  parts,  laying  on  each  the  burden  of  struggle  for  ex- 
istence. That  many  serious-minded  laboring  people  take  this 
view  of  the  situation  is  evident  from  the  growing  reluctance  of 
men  whose  trades  are  being  captured  by  ignorant  and  inefficient 
child  labor  to  bring  offspring  into  a  world  which  cannot  promise 
a  life  of  the  simplest  comforts  in  reward  for  hard  labor.  Here 
is  the  real  danger  of  that  "race  suicide"  so  vigorously  con- 
demned by  President  Roosevelt ;  for  while  the  man  of  virtue  and 
strength  is  deterred  from  propagating  his  kind  because  of  the 
jeopardy  in  which  his  children  would  stand,  the  vicious  and 
ignorant,  the  physically  unfit  and  the  discouraged  are  not  de- 
terred by  any  such  consideration,  but,  regardless  of  conse- 
quences, continue  to  propagate  their  kind  and  swell  the  propor- 
tion of  those  who  will  be  from  birth  to  death  a  heavy  liability 
against  society.  We  may  ignore  the  needs  of  a  single  child — or 
assume  that  those  corrective  agencies  established  to  gather  up 
the  wrecks  from  the  social  sea  will  care  for  him — but  Nature  is 
not  mocked.  If  we  maintain  an  industrial  system  which  sows  to 
the  flesh  we  shall  of  the  flesh  reap  corruption.  Our  danger,  then, 
is  a  greater  suicide  of  quality,  than  of  quantity. 


82  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

Both  the  intellectual  and  the  ethical  assets  that  enrich  society 
— together  with  such  social  institutions  as  conserve  and  further 
develop  these  virtues — are  believed  to  spring  directly  from  the 
rich  soil  of  the  family  life.  The  intimate  contact  of  helpless 
childhood  with  tender  motherhood  and  strong  fatherhood  yields 
in  the  parent  that  passionate  devotion  which  blossoms  in  the 
richest  fruit  of  sacrifice,  and  in  the  child  those  qualities  of  teach- 
ableness, obedience  and  filial  love  which — extended  to  social 
traditions,  institutions  and  laws — can  alone  explain  the  accumu- 
lated wealth  of  community  and  national  life. 

But  the  positive  benefits  of  home  are  not  all.  The  family 
implies  the  segregation  of  a  small  group  of  children  of  some- 
what kindred  tastes,  aptitudes  and  ideals,  away  from  the  dis- 
tracting influence  of  larger  social  groups.  Such  semi-seclusion 
of  the  child  is  imperative  if  definite  and  constructive  impressions 
are  to  be  made  on  the  growing  mind.  The  menace  to  the  in- 
tellectual and  moral  beginnings  of  childhood  from  early  min- 
gling in  promiscuous  crowds  of  people  foreign  to  the  home,  is 
obvious.  No  eminence  of  industrial  attainment  can  compensate 
a  nation  for  the  loss  of  the  security,  the  inspiration,  and  the  calm 
courage  of  that  social  institution  pictured  in  "The  Cotter's  Satur- 
day Night." 

Shall  we  passively  tolerate  or  actively  promote  an  evil  which 
destroys  all  this?  Shall  we  deny  to  the  parent  the  right,  or  excuse 
him  from  the  obligation,  to  provide  for  the  nourishment  of  the 
bodies  and  minds  of  his  offspring?  Shall  we  absolve  the  child 
from  allegiance  to  the  parent,  by  destroying  at  once  his  depend- 
ence and  his  respect,  and  shall  we  reduce  the  "home"  to  a  mere 
rendezvous  for  the  nightly  gathering  of  bodies  numb  ^yith  wear- 
iness and  minds  drunk  for  sleep?  Shall  we  deny  to  the  child 
who  must  be  a  wage-earner  the  years  required  to  prepare  himself 
for  even  efficient  wage  earning  and  commit  him  for  life  to  forms 
of  occupation  still  so  crude  as  to  offer  the  most  precarious  em- 
ployment, the  most  meager  wages,  and  the  hottest  competition? 
And  shall  we  further  place  this  form  of  conscript  labor  in  those 
fields  now  occupied  by  man  to  drive  him  out  by  the  economic 
force  of  lower  wages?  Shall  we  say  to  the  man  who  has  gloried 
in  the  sweetness  and  seclusion  of  his  home  and  in  the  tender 


CHILD   LABOR  '  83 

plants  of  childhood  springing  up  under  his  protection,  "This 
is  a  luxury  you  cannot  afford !"  There  are  glass  factories  in 
New  Jersey  and  Ohio  that  virtually  refuse  employment  to 
men  who  will  not  promise  to  bring  small  boys  to  work  with 
them.  There  are  Southern  cotton  mills  in  which  parents  sign 
contracts  to  send  all  their  children  to  work  upon  reaching  a 
certain  age.  And  there  are  little  cottages  in  the  coal  region  of 
Pennsylvania  in  which  daughters — because  they  cannot  work  in 
the  mines  or  breakers — are  unwelcome,  while  the  bond  between 
father  and  sons  is  hardly  more  than  a  relation  of  economic  con- 
venience. 

Doubtless  many  social  evils  threaten  the  integrity  of  the 
home,  but  when  we  remove  the  economic  foundation  on  which 
the  home  stands — the  ability  of  the  parents  to  provide  for  their 
children  during  their  growing  period — we  reverse  the  evolution- 
ary process  in  human  development  and  condemn  the  family  to 
inevitable  disintegration.  This  is  what  the  American  people  are 
doing  when  they  promote,  or  tolerate,  the  premature  employ- 
ment of  children. 

Westminster    Review.    172:    406-9.    October,    1909. 

Half-Timers  in  the    Factories.      Elizabeth    Sloan   Chesser. 

Half-timers  are  girls  and  boys  of  over  twelve  and  under 
fourteen,  who  have  obtained  a  labour  certificate,  and  are  conse- 
quently permitted  by  the  law  to  work  half  a  day  in  the  mills  or 
factories,  if  they  attend  school  the  other  half.  They  are  em- 
ployed either  in  morning  shifts  from  six  or  six-thirty  till  mid- 
day, or  in  the  afternoon  from  one  o'clock  till  five  or  six  in  the 
evening.  The  morning  sets  attend  school  in-  the  afternoon; 
those  who  work  in  the  factories  in  the  latter  part  of  the  day  have 
to  go  to  school  until  dinner  time.  In  some  cases  they  work  on 
alternate  days — Monday,  Wednesday,  Friday,  in  the  factory: 
Tuesday,  Thursday,  Saturday,  in  the  school.  They  are  living  a 
treadmill  existence  from  day  to  day,  from  week  to  week.  They 
are  doing  work  which  involves  a  double  strain.  The  mental 
effort  of  school  life  is  combined  with  the  physical  strain 
of  factory  life.    At  twelve  years  of  age,  the  period  when  normal 


84  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

growth  is  most  rapid,  they  have  to  go  through  a  strain  which 
results  in  arrested  development  for  life.  It  is  the  age  when 
children  require  regular  nourishing  meals,  exercise  in  the  fresh 
air,  combined  with  an  extra  allowance  of  rest  and  sleep. 

What  sort  of  life  is  led  by  the  half-timer?  He  has  to  rise  at 
five  or  five-thirty  summer  and  winter.  He  has  often  to  walk  a 
mile  to  the  factory  in  all  weathers  with,  perhaps,  a  crust  to  sus- 
tain him  till  the  breakfast  half-hour  arrives.  He  spends  his 
morning  in  the  greyness  and  gloom  of  the  factory,  amidst  the 
roar  of  machinery,  the  dust  and  heat  of  the  rooms.  He  walks 
home  again  for  dinner,  which  it  is  safe  to  say  is  far  from  being 
the  ideal  meal  for  a  growing  child  working  beyond  his  strength. 
The  majority  of  half-timers  are  the  children  of  factory  mothers, 
who  have  had  neither  the  tinle  nor  the  opportunity  to  learn 
cooking.  Fried  fish  and  chips  from  the  fish  shop,  or  bread, 
pickles,  and  cheese  would  form  a  sufficient  repast  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  child  or  his  parents;  the  ideal  child's  food,  milk, 
being  conspicuous  by  its  absence  from  factory  homes.  After 
dinner  there  is  school  to  attend,  and  the  evidence  of  school 
teachers  and  educational  authorities  generally  as  to  the  evil 
effects  of  the  half-time  system  on  the  children  is  overwhelming. 
The  children  come  to  school  worn  out  nervously  and  physically 
after  six  hours'  work  in  the  factory.  They  are  generally  dull  and 
languid,  or  nervous  and  irritable,  subject  to  habit  spasms,  to 
chorea,  or  St.  Vitus'  dance.  Very  often  they  fall  asleep  at  their 
work,  an  effort  of  nature  to  counteract  over-fatigue.  Whenever 
a  child  becomes  a  half-timer  the  teacher  can  see  mental,  physical, 
and  moral  deterioration.  The  mental  proofs  are  provided  by 
copy  book  and  exercises,  and  the  deterioration  of  manners  shown 
by  both  girls  and  boys  after  a  few  weeks'  factory  life  is  evidence 
of  the  moral  evils  of  children  being  allowed  to  work  in  the 
factories. 

It  is  not  difficuH  to  collect  evidence  of  the  physical  evils  of 
child  labour  in  the  factories.  A  few  years  ago  an  examination 
was  made  of  the  sight  and  hearing  of  250  boys  in  a  Lancashire 
school.  It  was  found  that  27  per  cent,  of  the  half-time  scholars, 
and  only  4  per  cent,  of  the  whole-time  scholars  suffered  from 
defective  hearing.     Also  that  defective  vision  existed  in  yj  per 


CHILD   LABOR  85 

cent,  of  the  half-timers,  compared  with  only  6  per  cent,  of  the 
full  time  scholars.  After  the  first  two  months  in  the  factory  the 
children  show  signs  of  physical  deterioration,  they  become  pallid 
and  lose  flesh.  They  suffer  from  headaches  and  other  signs  of 
nervous  strain.  They  show  every  indication  of  over-strain  and 
over-fatigue.  From  one  week  to  another  they  never  have  their* 
due  allowance  of  rest  and  sleep.  They  go  to  bed  late  compared 
with  children  of  a  higher  social  standing  and  they  rise,  perhaps 
at  five  a.  m.  Lack  of  nerve  rest  and  sleep  is  one  of  the  chief 
causes  of  mental  defect  in  after  life. 

The  danger  is,  perhaps,  greatest  to  the  girls.  From  twelve  to 
fourteen  years  is  the  critical  period  of  a  girl's  life,  and  undue 
strain  at  this  age  affects  her  whole  life  for  the  worse.  From  the 
medical  point  of  view  there  is  something  criminal  in  a  system 
that  permits  girl  children  to  work  on  their  feet  all  the  morning  in 
a  machine  shop,  and  spend  their  afternoons  at  hard  mental  work 
when  their  bodies  are  aching  with  fatigue,  and  their  brains  are 
dulled  and  stupid  from  the  noise  and  strain  of  the  factory. 
What  chance  have  they,  child-women,  who  have  had  no  youth, 
young  girls  exposed  to  all  the  moral  pollution  of  life  in  the 
factories?  Many  of  the  older  women  exercise  a  bad  moral 
influence  on  the  half-timers  and  the  younger  full-timers.  At 
twelve,  thirteen,  and  fourteen  years  these  young  girls  are  women 
with  a  knowledge  of  the  evil  of  life  which  is  pathetic  in  the 
extreme.  At  the  same  time,  this  is  the  receptive  age  from  the 
educational  point  of  view,  the  period  of  life  when  the  future 
mothers  and  housewives  ought  to  be  learning  the  A  B  C  of  a 
woman's  education.  What  chance  have  these  girls  to  gain  a 
knowledge  of  cooking,  housewifery,  and  economical  expenditure, 
if  their  education  is  checked  at  twelve,  is  finished  entirely  at 
thirteen  or  fourteen  by  the  half-time  system? 

The  majority  of  thinking  people  are  opposed  to  the  half-time 
system.  The  sentimental  argument  that  if  legislation  interferes 
with  child  labour  in  factories,  the  poor  widows  with  only  sons 
will  have  to  bear  the  brunt  is  not  borne  out  by  facts.  In  remark- 
ably few  cases,  according  to  school  authorities,  is  poverty  on  the 
part  of  the  parents  responsible  for  the  applications  for  half- 
time  certificates.     Very  often  the  father  of  the  child  is  getting 


86  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

good  wages,  but  does  not  see  why  an  extra  few  shillings  a  week 
should  be  given  up  because  the  teacher  thinks  the  child  is  better 
at  school.  Cases  of  absolute  callousness  on  the  part  of  the  par- 
ents are  plentiful  enough.  They  will  often  insist  upon  having 
the  half-time  papers,  even  when  strong  representations  are  made 
as  to  the  consequences  on  the  future  health  of  the  child. 

Opinion  is  unanimous  that  the  cotton  factory  operatives  are 
strongly  opposed  to  any  interference  with  the  half-time  system. 
They  cannot  be  convinced  that  limitation  of  child  labour  will 
prove  advantageous  to  themselves  in  the  end  by  raising  the  gen- 
eral wage.  It  is  only  by  legislation  that  the  half-time  system  can 
be  swept  away.  Comprehensive  legislation  would  mean  raising 
the  age  of  half-timers  to  fifteen,  and  reducing  the  working  hours 
of  young  people  under  eighteen  years  of  age  in  factories.  By 
the  establishment  of  trade  schools  for  the  industrial  training  of 
boys  and  housewifery  classes  for  girls  between  thirteen  and 
fifteen  years  of  age  the  children  would  have  a  chance  of  acquir- 
ing knowledge  which  would  help  them  to  secure  a  living  wage 
in  after  life.  Child  labour  in  factories  does  not  qualify  the 
workers  for  future  well-paid  employment.  The  raising  of  the 
school  age  would  provide  them  with  the  opportunity  of  obtaining 
a  wider  moral,  mental,  and  industrial  training.  Under  the  pres- 
ent system  the  children  leave  school  just  at  the  age  when  they 
profit  most  from  the  discipline  and  teaching  of  school  life.  The 
girls  go  straight  from  grappling  with  elementary  arithmetic 
and  geography  to  the  manual  labour  of  the  factory.  It  is  im- 
possible for  them,  exhausted  after  a  hard  day's  work,  to  attend 
technical  classes  in  the  evening.  So  they  are  unfitted  for  any 
life  but  the  factory.  Even  when  they  marry,  the  factory  draws 
them  back ;  they  are  happier  in  the  card  room  than  in  the  home. 
They  have  never  learned  to  cook,  to  care  for  the  simple  homely 
arts  of  the  housewife — in  a  word  they  have  never  had  a  chance. 
Let  them  have  their  chance.  Abolish  half-time  and  married 
women's  labour.  Teach  the  girls  and  the  women  hygiene  and 
housewifery.  And  so  strike  at  the  root  of  the  physical  de- 
terioration of  the  nation. 


CHILD   LABOR  87 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  25:  558-62.  May,   1905. 

School  as  a  Force  Arrayed  against  Child  Labor. 
James  H.  Kirkland. 

Within  past  years  we  have  traveled  far  in  our  ideas  of  the 
state.  We  no  longer  believe  that  government  to  be  best  that  governs 
least.  We  no  longer  beHeve  in  the  state  v^'hose  seal  of  authority 
is  the  badge  of  the  policeman,  whose  temples  are  its  jails  and 
penitentiaries,  whose  sole  duties  are  to  protect  life  and  property, 
and  secure  the  enforcement  of  the  commandments,  "Thou  shalt 
not  kill"  and  "Thou  shalt  not  steal."  We  realize  that  a  govern- 
ment has  no  higher  duty,  at  certain  times,  than  the  preservation 
of  its  own  existence  by  whatever  force  may  be  necessary  to 
make  secure  that  existence ;  but  we  believe  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
state  to  guard  its  higher  life  as  well  as  its  lower  life,  and  that,  in 
guarding  its  higher  life,  there  are  some  things  better  than  armies 
and  navies,  and  that  school-houses  and  churches  and  books  are 
no  less  necessary  instrumentalities  for  national  existence  than 
gunpowder  and  dynamite.  Representing,  therefore,  the  school, 
we  represent  our  nation  and  the  country's  government — for  the 
school  is  the  state,  after  all,  in  its  parental  capacity.  We  believe 
in  popular  education,  in  universal  education.  We  do  not  claim 
that  this  is  a  panacea  for  all  ills  or  a  remedy  for  all  wrongs. 
We  do  not  expect  to  see  all  men  made  wise,  or  just,  or  good. 
We  realize  that  with  the  best  we  can  do  there  will  be  some 
failures  in  life.  On  every  sea  some  barks  must  go  down.  But 
we  take  the  position  that  an  opportunity  must  be  given  to  every- 
one, and  that  every  child  must  have  the  privilege  of  working 
out  his  own  life,  of  developing  the  best  that  is  in  him — and 
therefore  we  believe  that  every  child  must  have  the  chance  of  an 
education.  We  are  opposed  to  child  labor  because  it  shuts  out 
that  opportunity,  and  makes  education  impossible. 

Therefore  no  legislation  on  this  subject  can  be  satisfactory  if 
it  ignores  the  educational  requirements  of  the  child.  The  de- 
mand for  an  age  limit  in  child  labor  is  justified  by  hygienic  laws, 
but  a  deeper  philosophy  lies  underneath  such  enactments.  Our 
problem  is  not  merely  to  keep  the  child  under  sixteen  out  of  the 
factory  or  mine,  but  to  keep  the  child  at  work  in  school.  The 
factory  is  better  than  the  slums;  it  may  be  that  the  factory  is  a 


88  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

better  place  than  the  home,  but  it  is  never  better  than  the  school ; 
and  it  is  just  where  parental  obligation  has  failed,  just  where 
the  home  has  disappeared  from  the  life  of  the  child,  that  the 
school  must  step  in  as  another  home  and  the  teacher  must  take 
the  place  of  the  parent  who  has  deserted  his  charge.  The  school 
must  provide  for  that  child  a  new  opportunity,  a  new  life.  It  is 
by  no  means  sufficient  to  have  an  enactment  saying  the  child 
must  be  able  to  read  and  write  before  being  allowed  to  go  to 
work  in  the  factory  or  mine.  It  is  not  unnatural  for  such  a 
child,  after  he  has  gone  to  work,  to  forget  all  that  he  has  learned 
and  to  drift  back  into  the  class  of  hopelessly  illiterate.  Reading 
and  writing  is  a  very  small  requirement,  when  it  stands  as  an 
educational  test  between  childhood  that  must  be  protected  and 
manhood  that  .should  look  after  itself ;  and  yet,  in  every  state 
in  the  Union,  I  suppose,  there  are  children  at  work  under  the  age 
of  sixteen  who  can  neither  read  nor  write. 

From  the  standpoint  of  the  school  we  urge  three  contentions 
in  our  consideration  of  this  subject: 

I.  We  contend  that  there  should  be  always  a  definite  educa- 
tional requirement  in  every  child  labor  law.  The  mere  establish- 
ment of  an  age  limit  is  insufficient,  and  the  requirement  that  the 
child  shall  be  able  to  read  and  write  is  pitifully  small.  A  law  re- 
quiring that  the  child  shall  attend  some  school  while  at  work  is 
some  improvement,  but  is  open  also  to  very  serious  objection,  and 
in  practical  operation  is  seldom  found  satisfactory.  A  child  can- 
not work  in  a  factory  six  or  eight  hours  a  day  and  do  intellectual 
work  at  night;  and  a  law  permitting  children  to  work  during 
the  vacation  period  puts  a  premium  on  long  vacations  and  short 
school  terms. 

II.  The  second  principle  for  which  we  contend  is  that  those 
who  are  interested  in  the  education  of  the  child  shall  have  some 
voice  in  the  execution  of  the  law  that  guards  that  education. 
The  making  out  of  certificates  should  not  be  placed  in  the  hands 
of  notaries  who  are  to  get  their  fees  for  this  operation,  nor 
should  such  certificates  be  made  out  on  the  unsupported  affidavit 
of  parents,  who  may  be  unscrupulous  in  their  desire  to  secure 
gain  from  the  child's  labor;  but  the  responsibility  should  be 
placed  in  the  hands  of  the  men  and  women  who  are  interested 
in  the  child  and  in  its  education. 


CHILD   LABOR  89 

IIL  The  third  point  I  would  make  is  a  plea  for  better 
schools  and  more  of  them.  I  speak  on  that  point  as  a  Southern 
man.  Of  all  our  problems,  that  is  the  problem  that  is  most  far- 
reaching. 

North  American  Review.   191:   773-84.  June,   1910. 

Will  Trade  Training  Solve  the  Child-Labor  Problem? 
Owen  R.  Lovejoy. 

We  are  repeating  the  history  of  factory  regulation  so  long  ago 
promoted  by  Sir  Robert  Peel,  Robert  Owen  and  other  leading 
manufacturers  in  England. 

The  larger  social  aspects  of  this  problem — the  weakening  of 
citizenship  and  the  cheapening  of  industry  itself — are  beginning 
to  appeal  as  motives  for  action  in  addition  to  the  mere  sense 
of  pity  for  the  wrongs  of  childhood,  which  was  the  chief  earlier 
motive.  Through  public  interest,  the  beginnings  of  which  date 
from  the  earlier  activities  of  trade-unions,  women's  clubs,  con- 
sumers' leagues  and  many  earnest  individual  workers,  there  have 
been  enacted  important  child-labor  laws  in  the  past  five  years 
in  thirty-eight  States  and  the  District  of  Columbia.  In  the  legis- 
lative sessions  of  1908-09,  seventeen  States  enacted  new  laws  or 
revised  existing  laws.  Five  of  these  States  are  Southern.  Since 
January  1st,  1910,  important  changes  in  these  laws  have  passed 
the  Legislatures  of  Kentucky,  Virginia,  Maryland,  New  Jersey, 
Rhode  Island  and  Massachusetts,  while  other  important  bills  are 
pending  in  Massachusetts,  New  York  and  Ohio. 

But  we  must  not  be  misled  by  this  somewhat  formidable  rec- 
ord of  legislative  enactments.  The  end  we  seek,  namely, 
adequate  preparation  of  the  American  child  for  citizenship,  is 
not  attained,  but  only  made  possible  of  attainment  by  such  pro- 
hibitions;  and  it  is  significant  that,  although  child-labor  laws  re- 
duce the  number  and  force  an  improvement  in  the  condition  of 
working-children,  the  field  of  usefulness  of  such  measures  is  limit- 
ed by  their  repressive  nature.  Multitudes  of  people  affected, 
whether  employers,  parents  or  children,  resent  these  laws  and 
look  on  them  as  detrimental,  while  an  army  of  officials  is  required 
to  secure  their  enforcement  against  the  connivance  of  these  three 
interested  factors. 


90  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

This  negative  legislation  has  been  accompanied  in  most  in- 
stances by  positive  laws  for  compulsory  school  attendance.  In 
all  the  States  having  child-labor  laws  compulsory  school  attend- 
ance laws  have  been  enacted  except  in  Alabama,  Florida,  Georgia, 
Louisiana  and  Texas.  The  effectiveness  of  such  laws  is  strik- 
ingly attested  by  the  steady  growth  in  the  number  of  common- 
wealths adopting  them.  In  1870  less  than  five  per  cent,  of  the 
population  were  subject  to  compulsory  school  kws.  To-day  over 
seventy-two  per  cent,  are  subject  to  these  laws. 

The  findings  of  the  Massachusetts  Commission  on  Industrial 
and  Technical  Education  have  been  largely  quoted.  They  are 
significant  of  what  probably  occurs  in  other  States  at  the  end 
of  the  compulsory  school  period.  In  Massachusetts  there  are 
25,000  children  between  fourteen  and  sixteen  not  in  school,  five- 
sixths  of  whom  did  not  complete  the  grammar  school,  one-fifth 
did  not  complete  the  seventh  grade  and  one-fourth  did  not  com- 
plete the  sixth   grade. 

The  statement  was  recently  made  by  a  leading  educator  in 
Massachusetts  that  from  the  army  of  20,000,000  children  attend- 
ing the  public  schools  of  the  United  States  during  the  school 
year,  there  would  be  at  least  5,000,000  deserters  before  the  roll 
would  be  called  at  the  beginning  of  the  following  school  year.  It 
is  of  the  greatest  importance  to  discover  the  cause  of  this  deser- 
tion ;  why  there  is  such  a  decrease  in  school  attendance  after  the 
fourth  grade ;  why  such  impatience  for  the  last  day  of  the  com- 
pulsory school  period  to  come ;  what  the  attractive  feature  out  of 
school  and  what  the   future  of  these   deserters. 

Unquestionably  the  majority  become,  temporarily  or  perma- 
nently, wage-earners,  either  from  family  necessity  or  because 
work  promises  less  monotony  and  irksomeness  than  school  at- 
tendance. The  responsibility  seems  to  lie  mostly  with  the  child, 
for  out  of  3,157  families  investigated  seventy-six  per  cent,  could 
give  the  children  industrial  training  and  would  gladly  do  so 
were  it  offered.  In  many  instances  the  parents  were  found  to  be 
spending  in  supplementary  lessons,  such  as  commercial  branches 
and  music,  as  much  as  the  child's  income. 

It  was  found  that  these  children  seldom  receive  over  fivp 
dollars  a  week  before  they  are  seventeen,  and  reach  the  maximum 


CHILD   LABOR  91 

wage  of  eight  to  ten  dollars  at  twenty  years  of  age.  It  is  esti- 
mated that  for  every  one  going  into  an  occupation  advantageous  to 
the  employee,  four  enter  a  cotton-mill  or  become  messengers  or 
cash-girls.  Moreover,  it  is  rare  that  one  goes  from  an  unskilled 
to  a  skilled  trade.  Out  of  the  fifty  cases  between  seventeen  and 
twenty  years  of  age  employed  in  Cambridge  in  skilled  industries, 
only  one  had  formerly  been  employed  in  unskilled  labor  other 
than  errand  and  office  work.  Boys  were  rarely  found  in  print- 
ing-houses who  were  formerly  employed  at  other  work,  and 
this  was  true  of  mechanics,  plumbers,  painters,  glass-workers, 
plasterers,   masons   and   stone-cutters. 

A  comparison  was  made  of  the  aggregate  wages  at  eighteen 
years  of  age,  of  children  leaving  school  at  fourteen  and  at  six- 
teen. The  results  showed  that  even  with  the  faulty  education 
now  aflforded,  the  child  of  sixteen  goes  from  school  so  much 
better  equipped  as  a  wage-earner  that  in  two  years  his  earnings 
aggregate  more  than  those  of  the  child  who  left  school  at  four- 
teen and  has  been  working  four  years. 

Why  do  such  unsatisfactory  and  poorly  paid  employments  lure 
children  from  school?  The  desertion  seems  mainly  due  to  posi- 
tive dislike  of  school  life  and  a  wish  to  be  active.  Influenced  by 
their  companions,  children  have  a  strong  ambition  for  money  of 
their  own.  A  compulsory  elementary  education  which  results  in 
such  distaste  for  school  that  children  prefer  to  enter  some  un- 
skilled labor,  which  wastes  from  two  to  four  years  of  adoles- 
cence for  an  insignificant  wage  and  leaves  them  stranded  at 
twenty,  has  missed  the  purpose  of  education.  Some  helpful  facts 
they  may  have  gleaned,  but  there  has  been  little  influence  in 
shaping  their  life  and  ideals.  The  most  common  deduction  from 
the  investigations  made  is  that  "many  of  these  children  would  be 
in  school  if  the  school  promised  preparation  for  some  life  pursuit." 
Our  problem  is  to  supply  the  attractive  power  in  our  educational 
system  that  will  prove  the  complement  of  prohibitive  legislation 
and   compulsory  elementary  education. 

The  adaptation  of  our  educational  system  to  earlier  needs  in 
our  civilization  is  well  known,  but  we  may  as  well  face  the  fact 
that  it  is  at  present  class  education,  for  the  great  majority  of 
our  youth   enter  manual  trades,  w^hile  our  schools  in   the  main 


92  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

furnish  only  preparation  for  professional  life.  In  a  recent  paper 
which  appeared  in  the  "Atlantic  Monthly"  Dr.  Paul  Hanus  de- 
scribes our  present  educational  system  as  "general"  in  contrast 
with  the  excellent  system  he  advocates.  In  our  judgment  our 
schools  are  not  providing  a  general  education,  but  a  special  class 
education. 

All  the  dominant  characteristics  of  the  regular  school  method 
tend  to  train  children  to  avoid  occupations  which  command  the 
services  of  at  least  ninety  per  cent,  of  our  population,  while  they 
are  urged  by  precept  and  example  to  seek  eagerly  the  employ- 
ments of  the  other  ten  per  cent.  The  recruits  for  our  industrial 
army  receive  comparatively  little  of  the  time  or  money,  expended 
upon  our  public  schools. 

Educators  are  giving  their  best  thought  to  the  task  of  adapting 
our  public-school  system  to  the  needs  of  an  industrial  society, 
and  many  steps  are  being  taken  in  this  direction.  In  1890  thirty- 
seven  city  school  systems  reported  as  having  manual  training. 
In  1906  there  were  five  hundred  and  ten.  Trade  schools  are  being 
instituted  in  many  cities  and  State  Legislatures  are  rapidly 
making  appropriations  for   industrial   and   trade   training. 

We  need  not  here  discuss  the  excellent  programmes  which  are 
being  suggested  by  leading  educators,  covering  as  they  do  the  in- 
troduction into  our  elementary  schools  of  practical  work  with  an 
industrial  bent ;  the  multiplication  and  enlargement  of  high 
schools  of  the  manual  training  type ;  the  founding  of  trade 
schools  which  will  provide  vocational  training  to  bridge  the 
chasm  between  fourteen  and  sixteen,  when  so  many  enter  un- 
skilled industries :  and  continuation  schools  to  serve  the  needs  of 
those  who  have  already  entered  industry  with  meagre  preparation. 

Every  revision  is  admirable  that  will  make  our  schools  a  part 
of  real  life  and  impress  their  practical,  helpful  character  to  such 
a  degree  that  the  family  will  prefer  to  sacrifice  the  pittance  that 
might  be  received  for  unskilled  labor,  in  order  that  opportunity 
may  be  given  the  child  to  prepare  for  larger  usefulness  and 
remuneration.  For  some  families  this  sacrifice  would  be  impos- 
sible because  of  poverty.  In  every  such  instance,  in  the  interest 
of  the  commonwealth,  assistance  must  be  given  either  by  private 
or  public  aid.    The  question  as  to  the  limit  of  social  responsibility 


CHILD   LABOR  93 

is  a  mere  quibble.  When  society  dictates  that  every  child  shall 
"be  educated,  it  cannot  disclaim  the  responsibility  implied. 

But  preparation  for  skilled  production  is  not  enough.  It  has 
been  said  that  all  our  training  to-day  is  a  training  for  consump- 
tion, but  nothing  seems  to  us  to  have  been  quite  so  poorly  done. 
Every  worker  during  his  vocational  training  should  have  an  op- 
portunity to  learn  something  of  the  demands  and  conditions  of 
labor  in  other  industries.  Only  thus  can  he  be  fitted  for  intelli- 
gent democratic  citizenship,  for  wise  sympathy  with  fellow 
workers  and  for  an  appreciation  of  work  and  the  place  of  the 
worker  in  the  social  scheme.  Workers  thus  trained  would  not 
tolerate  the  inequality  of  profits  to  the  actual  producer  and  the 
middleman,  so  strikingly  demonstrated  at  the  recent  New  York 
City  Congestion  Exhibit. 

Efficient  workmanship  and  honest  service  would  also  be  de- 
manded. Whatever  the  phases  through  which  society  may  pass, 
the  purpose  of  education  is  constant — intelligent  citizenship.  In 
a  society  pre-eminently  industrial  the  education  must  be  along 
industrial  lines,  but  if  it  ends  merely  in  the  acquirement  of  a 
handicraft  it  is  failure.  There  must  also  be  training  toward 
lofty  industrial  ideals.  If  we  could  train  the  coming  generation 
to  revolt  against  tawdry  or  dishonest  goods,  we  should  have  some 
hope  for  the  steady  elevation  of  our  industries  to  a  higher  plane. 
The  manufacturer  is  forced  by  competition  to  cater  to  the  ma- 
jority demand,  and  quantity  is  the  popular  goal.  The  true  crafts- 
man who  is  dissatisfied  with  the  dishonest  results  of  the  speed- 
ing which  reduces  himself  and  his  fellows  to  machines  has  at 
present  one  recourse — he  can  quit.  What  is  demanded  is  train- 
ing for  the  entire  group  to  which  this  craftsman  belongs.  The 
very  class  of  people  who  do  the  shoddy  work  buy  that  kind  of 
goods.  This  is  partly  due  to  their  cheapness,  for  the  average 
mechanic  cannot  afTord  better.  But  let  him  once  sense  the 
affront  to  his  manhood,  the  insult  to  his  wife  and  family,  the  so- 
cial sin  he  commits  by  taking  from  the  hands  of  the  merchant  at 
any  price  that  which  is  devoid  of  all  ideals  of  proportion,  beauty, 
simplicity,  honesty  or  reasonable  utility: — a  new  type  of  pur- 
chaser enters  the  markets  of  the  world. 

The  training  of  the  child  is  the  main  concern  rather  than  the 


94  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

effect  this  training  is  to  have  on  industries.  Our  public  schools 
must  be  called  into  requisition  not  to  train  experts  in  single 
specialized  trades  in  order  to  lift  the  burden  of  expense  from  .the 
employer,  but  that  the  children  shall  become  so  alert  and  well 
developed  as  to  be  fit  for  a  choice  of  several  opportunities.  A 
noted  educator  has  recently  suggested  that  "the  last  two  years 
of  vocational  training  would  include  specialized  instruction  in 
the  trades  appropriate  to  a  given  locality." 

There  is  the  danger-point.  This  is  legitimate,  if  the  trades 
that  seem  proper  to  a  locality  afford  a  fair  opportunity  for  ad- 
vancement in  skill  and  in  wages.  Otherwise  the  boys  and  girls 
should  be  so  fitted  by  a  knowledge  of  other  occupations  that  their 
future  and  the  future  of  their  children  can  never  be  dominated 
by  what  may  chance  to  be  "the  leading  industry"  of  the  com- 
munity. It  is  obvious  to  careful  students  that  the  dominant  in- 
dustries of  a  community  are  frequently  not  such  as  offer  the 
best  opportunity  for  the  development  of  skill  and  advancement 
to  self-support.  In  spite  of  this  fact,  is  it  not  true  that  the  move- 
ment toward  manual  training  is  too  prone  to  accept  the  local 
situation  as  inevitable,  and  to  seek  to  adjust  itself  rather  than  at- 
tempting to  alter  local  conditions?  For  example,  the  mining  of 
coal  is  a  chief  industry  in  Pennsylvania,  but  the  child  of  the  coal- 
mining community,  instead  of  being  absolutely  predestined  in  his 
industrial  career,  should  have  presented  to  him  an  industrial 
horizon  broad  enough  to  enable  him  to  choose  intelligently 
whether  he  will  become  a  coal-miner.  It  is  questionable  whether 
the  training  offered  the  youth  in  some  of  our  industrial  centres 
can  be  regarded  as  of  especial  construction  value.  To  equip 
them  for  earlier  entrance  into  some  trade  or  labor  which  can 
never  give  promise  of  a  living  wage  may  be  only  to  aggravate 
the  evil  we  seek  to  abate. 

Girls  should  be  excluded  by  law  from  all  trades  which  menace 
their  physical  or  moral  well-being,  and  thus  jeopardize  the  in- 
terest of  the  home  and  of  future  generations.  The  trades  re- 
maining should  be  carefully  selected  on  the  basis  of  labor  de- 
mand, opportunities  for  advancing  in  efficiency  and  remuneration 
and  their  effect  upon  womanly  instincts  and  domestic  tastes.  In 
the  trades  thus  selected  they  should  receive  as  careful  industrial 
training  as  boys.     Such  a  course  would  deter  them  from  enter- 


CHILD   LABOR  95 

ing  industry  at  an  age  and  degree  of  preparation  which  forbid 
their  becoming  skilled  laborers.  The  unskilled  trade  is  often 
more  vitiating  to  women  from  the  social  standpoint  than  to  men. 
A  boy  at  least  looks  upon  industry  as  a  permanent  thing  and 
rarely  fails  to  have  some  regard  for  his  fellow  workmen.  The 
girl  is  apt  to  consider  it  as  a  temporary  occupation  and  hence 
does  not  respect  industry  and  her  fellow  worker  and  cares  noth- 
ing for  organization  or  any  protective  measures. 

The  excuse  made  for  not  including  domestic  science  in  trade 
schools  now  existing  is  that  girls  do  not  desire  to  go  into  domes- 
tic service.  It  is  preposterous  that  only  those  girls  who  are  will- 
ing to  enter  such  employment  should  receive  this  training.  For 
every  girl  there  should  be  adequate  instruction  in  the  subjects 
that  vitally  affect  the  home.  She  should  receive  some  knowledge 
of  productive  processes  in  general  hygiene,  decorative  art  in  its 
relation  to  the  home  and  domestic  science.  Society,  in  order  to 
serve  its  own  ends,  should  expect  each  girl  to  be  mistress  in  her 
own  home,  and  if  industrial  training  is  provided  at  all,  should 
embody  domestic  science  not  as  a  fitting  for  remunerative  oc- 
cupation, but  as  preparation  for  home-making.  When  it  does 
not  mark  a  girl  as  having  chosen  to  be  a  domestic  servant,  un- 
doubtedly many  will  choose  such  instruction  and  go  out  with 
loftier  ideals  of  a  home  and  with  preparation  for  its  responsi- 
bilities. The  stigma  now  resting  upon  domestic  science  as  being 
something  necessary  to  be  understood  only  by  domestic  servants 
should  be  removed. 

Let  us  give  all  our  girls  the  idea  that  home-making  requires 
scientific  preparation  or  else  give  up  the  theory  that  the  home  is 
especially  "woman's  work."  Incidentally,  this  might  so  develop 
the  future  directors  of  homes  that  they  would  bring  about  con- 
ditions which  would  make  domestic  service  a  dignified  and  de- 
sirable trade.  It  is  notorious  at  present  that  in  many  homes  no 
self-respecting  girl  can  work  as  a  domestic  servant,  for  conditions 
are  such  as  would  invite  speedy  correction  if  any  manufacturer 
or  merchant  attempted  to  maintain  them  in  their  places  of  busi- 
ness. And  this,  not  from  a  deliberate  desire  to  be  unjust,  but 
from  sheer  ignorance. 

Both  employers  and  organized  workers  are  divided  on  the  sub- 
ject of  trade  schools  under  a  system  of  public  instruction.     The 


96  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

manufacturer  doubts  the  efficiency  of  workers  thus  trained.  This 
doubt  cannot  be  removed  by  argument,  but  only  by  a  practical 
demonstration  of  the  quality  of  workmanship.  The  equipment 
and  instruction  should  be  such  that  a  certificate  from  a  public 
trade  school  would  mean  that  its  holder  lacks  nothing  that  his 
trade  calls  for,  save  the  celerity  which  comes  only  by  practice. 
However,  there  is  nothing  to  hinder  the  inauguration  of  factory 
trade  schools  when  an  industry  so  desires. 

A  most  interesting  experiment  in  combining  practical  train- 
ing with  education  is  in  the  team-work  system,  evolved  by  the 
University  of  Cincinnati.  Students  are  employed  alternate  weeks 
in  various  factories  of  the  city  and  alternate  weeks  in  the  class- 
room. Thus  the  employer  has  a  regular  shift  of  two  workmen," 
while  the  students  receive  the  practical  training  required  under 
commercial  conditions. 

Organized  labor  fears  that  the  public  trade  school  will  flood 
the  labor  market  and  increase  the  sharpness  of  competition  for 
work.  But,  as  Robert  A.  Woods  has  observed:  "It  is  incon- 
ceivable that  as  a  class  school-trained  workmen  should  not  be 
even  more  jealous  than  others  of  all  unreasonable  encroachments 
upon  their  wage  standard,  and  that  they  should  not  apply  their 
additional  training  to  the  development  of  even  more  effective 
forms  of  labor  organization  than  now  exist." 

All  private  and  class  interests  must  be  forgotten  in  the  interest 
of  the  social  good,  if  we  are  to  meet  the  problem  of  proper  educa- 
tion in  a  democracy.  Undoubtedly  the  manufacturer  will  profit 
by  having  the  public,  through  the  trade  school,  pay  for  training 
his  recruits  and  bear  the  cost  of  the  material  now  wasted  by  be- 
ginners. To  make  the  employer  and  not  the  child  the  chief  bene- 
ficiary of  such  a  system,  to  make  the  newer  education  play  into 
the  hands  of  great  industrial  interests,  would  be  a  perversion 
of  a  splendid  opportunity.  But  while  this  direct  benefit  to  the 
employer  is  acknowledged,  the  trained  worker  and  society  in  gen- 
eral will  reap  the  chief  advantage  if  industrial  training  is  proper- 
ly directed.  The  trained  worker  will  cease  to  be  menaced  by  the 
helpless  and  ignorant  competitor,  many  times  the  child  laborer, 
now  so  often  the  potent  tool  of  the  employer. 

Moreover,  the  trained  worker,  together  with  society  at  large. 


CHILD   LABOR  97 

will  reap  the  constant  advantage  of  having  offered  for  purchase 
in  the  markets  honest  products.  The  community  will  be  relieved 
of  the  burden,  now  so  heavy,  of  that  multitude  of  industrial  mis- 
fits whose  helplessness  arises  from  ignorance  and  utter  lack  of 
training  for  any  useful  occupation.  Best  of  all,  if  there  is  placed 
before  the  youth  of  our  nation  the  opportunity  to  learn  some  one 
handicraft  in  its  completeness,  they  can  never  be  crushed  to  the 
level  of  industrial  machines.  The  methods  pursued  in  this  edu- 
cational revolution  must  keep  paramount  the  necessity  of  en- 
hancing our  most  valuable  social  asset,  intelligent  citizenship. 
Prohibitive  legislation  and  compulsory  elementary  education 
open  the  door  of  opportunity  for  youth,  but  the  education  must 
be  of  such  a  character  as  to  help  the  child  by  its  attraction  and 
lead  him  into  such  fields  of  skilled  labor  that  in  the  education  of 
his  own  children  compulsion  will  cease  to  be  necessary.  The  pres- 
ent demand  among  parents — in  so  far  as  they  have  been  able  to 
express  their  desires — are  so  wide-spread  as  to  justify  more  ag- 
gressive steps  than  have  thus  far  been  taken  in  this  direction. 

Annals    of   the   American   Academy.    25:    437-58.    May,    1905. 
Children  in  American  Street  Trades.  Myron  E.  Adams. 

An  investigation  of  1,000  newsboys,  ranging  in  age  from  five 
to  twenty-two,  showed  that  out  of  this  number,  127,  or  12  per 
cent,  were  under  ten  years  of  age.  Among  the  number  there 
were  forty-two  Italians,  twenty-five  Americans,  twenty-four 
Germans,  sixteen  Irish  and  eight  Jews.  One  hundred  and  six 
had  both  parents  living,  and  only  twenty-one  had  lost  either 
father  or  mother.  Their  aggregate  earnings  were  $41.40  per 
day.  or  an  average  earning  of  thirty-two  cents  per  day,  for 
which  they  worked  three  and  one-half  hours  daily. 

It  is  sometimes  asserted  that  children  under  ten  years  of  age, 
if  not  engaged  in  street  trading,  would  lounge  about  in  idleness 
and  mischief.  It  must,  however,  be  remembered  that  the  truancy 
law  requires  the  attendance  of  all  such  children  at  school.  It 
would  certainly  seem  better  if  only  to  secure  a  normal  physical 
development  that  these  children  should  play  about  the  street, 
around    their    homes,    in    the    playgrounds    or    in    the    crowded 


98  SELECTED    ARTICLES 

downtown  district  at  the  Chicago  Boy's  Club,  which  is  con- 
ducted exclusively  for  the  boys  of  the  street,  than  that  they 
should  share  in  the  intense  life  of  street  trading. 

Nor  is  it  right  to  characterize  as  idleness  the  play  of  a  child 
of  ten  after  live  hours'  application  in  the  public  school,  since  play 
has  been  recognized  as  one  of  the  most  important  factors  in  the 
physical  and  mental  development  of  child  life.  Anyone  famiHar 
with  the  necessities  of  child  life  in  the  tenement  districts  under- 
stands that  the  street  is  the  playground  for  the  child.  It  ought  to 
be  emphasized  here  that  there  is  a  well-known  difference  in  the 
physical  and  moral  influences  surrounding  street  trading  in  the 
downtown  district  with  all  the  freedom  from  external  control 
either  on  the  part  of  city  or  parent,  as  compared  with  the  con- 
ditions of  street  play  within  the  neighborhood  in  which  the  child" 
lives  where  the  restrictions  of  home  and  friends  are  able  to  in- 
fluence to  some  measure  his  conduct. 

The  suggestion  which  may  occur  to  the  casual  reader,  that 
the  newsboy  under  ten  years  of  age,  prohibited  from  trading  on 
the  street,  would  be  deprived  of  a  very  important  part  of  his 
support,  is  not  sustained  by  the  facts  obtained  during  the  inves- 
tigation. Only  a  very  small  number  of  these  children  are  from 
dependent  families.  A  careful  investigation  of  the  records  of  the 
Charity  Organization  Society  shows  that  of  the  i,ooo  newsboys  in- 
vestigated, the  names  of  but  sixteen  families  are  found,  and  of 
these  sixteen,  eight  applied  for  the  privilege  of  a  vegetable 
garden,  of  the  remaining  eight  only  four  received  direct  help, 
such  as  coal,  clothing  or  food. 

Some  children  sell  papers  through  the  coercion  of  selfish  par- 
ents. During  the  investigation,  a  well-dressed  Italian  was  seen 
standing  on  the  corner  of  Adams  and  State  streets  watching  his 
three  sons  selling  papers.  The  three  boys,  aged  respectively, 
fourteen,  ten  and  eight,  earned  jointly  $2  a  day.  The  father 
stood  by  to  prevent  any  investigation  of  their  earnings  or  school 
attendance,  yet  there  seemed  to  be  no  desire  on  his  part  to 
participate  in  their  labors.  In  the  majority  of  cases  the  boys 
do  not  have  the  protection,  even  of  the  fathers,  but  are  left  to 
the  mercy  of  the  street. 

The  investigation  disclosed  the  fact  that  the  newsboy  is  pecu- 
liarly subject  to  dangers  of  this  sort.     He  is  the  only  working 


CHILD   LABOR  99 

child  whose  occupation  offers  an  excuse  for  remaining  on  the 
street  at  night,  while  apparently  pursuing  a  legitimate  industry. 
Although  the  city  is  full  of  unscrupulous  men,  it  is  toward  the 
newsboy  that  such  a  man  may  most  easily  hold  the  advantage  of 
an  employer  of  boys  under  fourteen.  Besides  this  he  has  an  op- 
portunity of  employing  boys  who  are  already  enervated  by  ir- 
regular hours,  improper  food,  and  where  sense  of  decency  in 
many  cases  has  been  broken  down  by  life  on  the  street  at  all 
hours  of  day  or  night.  Instances  of  this  kind  are  of  frequent 
occurrence,  although  they  are  seldom  made  public.  The  police 
have  direct  evidence  that  a  newsdealer,  who  had  a  prosperous 
corner  on  Halsted  street,  hired  eight  young  boys,  working  for 
him  at  a  percentage  of  one  cent  for  five  papers  sold.  This 
man  required  the  boys  to  come  to  his  room  to  receive  their 
pay,  and  there  committed  violence  on  each  of  the  eight  boys,  most 
of  whom  were  under  fourteen  years  of  age.  A  newsboy  who  was 
brought  to  the  John  Worthy  School  was  found  to  be  suffering 
from  disease.  An  investigation  instituted  by  Mr.  Sloan  disclosed 
the  facts  as  stated  above.  The  case  never  came  up  in  the  courts, 
as  the  man  disappeared  from  the  city  when  he  discovered  that 
there  was  such  damaging  evidence  against  him  and  the  author- 
ities have  been  unable  to   find  him. 

Mr.  Sloan,  the  superintendent  of  the  John  Worthy  School, 
authorizes  the  statement,  that  "One  third  of  the  newsboys  who 
come  to  the  John  Worthy  School  have  venereal  disease,  and  that 
lo  per  cent,  of  the  remaining  newsboys  at  present  in  the  Bride- 
well, are  according  to  the  physician's  diagnosis,  suffering  from 
similar  diseases." 

The  newsboys,  as  well  as  the  messenger  boy,  and  American 
District  Telegraph  boy,  on  account  of  his  availibility  is  frequently 
found  in  the  "red  light"  district,  and  as  a  messenger  boy  for 
men  and  women  of  dissolute  character,  learns  the  very  worst  side 
of  the  city's  life.  He  knows  many  of  the  professional  pro- 
stitutes by  name,  and  has  become  attached  to  them  by  presents 
of  fruit  and  candy. 

Mr.  Sloan  also  states,  that  "The  newsboy  who  comes  to  the 
John  Worthy  School  is,  on  the  average,  one-third  below  the  ordi- 
nary boy  in  development  physically."  This  is  to  be  accounted  for 


100  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

by  irregular  days  and  sleepless  nights.  The  strongest  under  these 
conditions  cannot  long  hope  to  compete  with  the  boy  who  has  a 
normal  amount  of  sleep  and  who  does  not  lack  for  proper  food  at 
regular  intervals.  If  boys  under  ten  are  required  to  rise  at  4.30 
or  5  a.  m.,  they  have  been  under  four  and  one-half  hours'  ex- 
citement and  labor  before  entering  school,  where  for  five  hours 
they  are  to  be  engaged  in  more  or  less  mental  effort.  Then 
many  of  the  boys  distribute  papers  by  the  route  system  in  the 
morning,  also  sell  papers  in  the  evening,  beginning  in  such  in- 
stances the  labor  and  excitement  of  their  trade  immediately  up- 
on leaving  school,  lasting  for  an  average  time  of  three  hours, 
making  a  total  daily  activity  of  over  twelve  hours. 

The  physical  danger  of  the  child  varies  with  his  age.  We 
must  not  and  cannot  treat  him  like  a  man,  for  the  youthful  or- 
ganism is  particularly  susceptible  to  physical  abuse.  The  excite- 
ment of  the  street  stimulates  unnatural  desires  on  the  part  of  the 
boy.  He  sees  the  men  about  him  participating  in  questionable 
pleasures  and  soon  learns  to  follow  their  example  with  dis- 
astrous results  to  himself. 

Among  the  1,000  newsboys  examined,  there  were  75.1  per 
cent,  who  came  under  the  compulsory  education  law.  Of  these, 
662  gave  the  name  of  some  school  they  were  attending.  Sub- 
sequent investigation  of  the  information  thus  given  proved  the 
statements  to  be  generally  true.  It  was  found,  however,  that  in 
many  cases  their  attendance  was  so  irregular  as  to  amount  to 
truancy. 

Authorities  on  truancy  agree  that  the  street  trades  are  the 
chief  support  and  resource  of  truant  children;  requiring  prac- 
tically no  capital,  and  demanding  no  recommendation,  they  are 
open  to  all  alike. 

In  the  minds  of  the  parents  who  have  little  or  no  education 
themselves,  the  school  is  naturally  made  subordinate  to  the  pecu- 
niary gain  of  the  child  in  selling  papers,  even  if  at  times  it  is  a 
mere  pittance.  The  boy  is  made  to  feel  at  an  early  age  that  his 
value  is  determined  by  the  money  he  can  earn  on  the  street.  The 
school  is  the  place  that  demands  his  time  for  some  of  the  best 
hours  in  the  day.  He  cannot  see  the  relation  between  the  school 
and  his  daily  trade,  and  in  most  cases  he  assumes  that  the  school 


CHILD   LABOR  loi 

is  his  enemy.  To  the  boy  accustomed  to  the  street,  school  soon 
becomes  irksome.  The  freedom  of  life  appeals  to  him,  the  very 
busy  hours  are  soon  over  and  there  is  time  for  loafing  and 
idling  with  other  and  older  boys,  and  it  is  in  such  idle  hours 
as  these  that  the  vices  that  are  later  to  prove  the  ruin  of  the  boy 
are  contracted.  The  secretary  of  the  probation  court  officers 
states  that  "these  are  one  hundred  and  forty-three  newsboys  in 
charge  of  the  officers  of  that  court,"  and  adds,  that  "the  first 
offense  of  almost  every  boy  she  had  had  to  deal  with  has  been 
truancy." 

The  boy  who  is  out  at  four,  or  even  earlier,  in  the  morning 
either  to  deliver  papers  on  a  route,  or  to  sell  on  a  corner,  is 
breaking  into  hours  of  sleep  that  the  young  and  growing  body 
is  much  in  need  of.  The  energy  expended  in  the  first  spurt  of 
selling  or  delivering  his  papers  leaves  him  unfitted  for  the  school 
room  when  he  reaches  there  at  nine  o'clock,  the  reaction  sets  in, 
the  body  demands  rest,  and  the  quiet  monotony  of  the  school 
room  is  in  such  marked  contrast  to  that  of  the  street  full  of 
life  and  motion  that  the  study  of  books  seems  more  than  ever 
a  drudgery,  and  the  desire  to  get  away  from  it  more  than  ever 
intense. 

Gaming  is  unquestionably  a  most  common  vice  among  news- 
boys. Selling  newspapers  does  not  make  the  boy  gamble,  and  it 
cannot  be  said  that  gambling  is  peculiar  to  newsboys,  yet  here  the 
opportunities  seem  largest.  Where  money  is  ready  at  hand  and 
more  is  to  be  easily  had,  its  value  is  seldom  recognized.  It  is 
very  easy  for  the  boy  to  "chance  it"  with  the  hope  of  greater  gain, 
when  at  various  times  during  the  day  and  night  he  is  brought 
in  contact  with  many  boys  who  are  likewise  inclined.  Gambling 
in  the  downtown  district  takes  various  forms.  "Shooting  pen- 
nies" is  the  most  common,  although  "craps"  takes  a  large  part 
of  the  earnings.  In  this  way  the  income  of  the  whole  day  may 
pass  through  the  hands  of  a  number  of  boys  in  a  few  moments. 

Probably  no  one  familiar  with  juvenile  delinquency  can  seri- 
ously doubt  that  any  child  that  tires  of  parental  or  school  re- 
straints can  go  downtown  to  borrow  or  beg  a  "stake."  and  by 
joining  a  "gang,"  live  the  exciting  and  ever-degrading  life  of  the 
streets.    The  immediate  cost  of  this  pernicious  license  falls  most 


102  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

heavily  upon  the  families  of  the  foreign  poor.  There  is  no  story 
more  tragic  in  the  annals  of  life  in  Chicago  than  the  break  be- 
tween the  American  boy  of  foreign  parentage  and  his  tenement 
home.  The  foreigner's  child,  even  though  born  abroad,  after 
two  years  in  the  public  school,  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  an 
American,  while  his  parents  remain  European  peasants.  The 
mother  quite  probably  speaks  no  English,  and  the  father  just 
enough  to  understand  his  Irish  foreman.  The  boy  learns  to 
discount  his  parents'  ignorance,  and  they  misunderstand  and  half 
fear  his  strange  new  world  wisdom.  The  boy,  becoming  im- 
patient of  their  restraint,  runs  away,  sleeps  out  a  night  or  two, 
maintains  himself  by  selling  papers,  likes  the  license  and  excite- 
ment of  the  street  life,  and  his  home  knows  him  no  more.  He 
is  now  easy  game  for  the  experienced  vagrant  or  sneak  thief. 

Girls  have  long  been  selling  papers  in  Chicago,  so  long  indeed 
that  the  fact  seems  to  have  passed  unnoticed.  The  investigator 
saw  twenty,  and  a  moderate  estimate  puts  them  at  three  times 
that  number.  They  are  mostly  Italian,  with  a  few  Germans.  At 
one  time  an  attempt  was  made  to  stop  the  girls  by  refusing  to 
sell  them  papers,  but  they  were  able  to  obtain  them  from  stands, 
since  that  time  there  has  been  no  further  effort  to  prevent  their 
selling.  A  little  girl  who  began  to  sell  papers  when  eleven  years 
old,  built  up  a  large  trade  in  the  neighborhood  of  Madison  and 
Halsted  streets.  For  more  than  two  years  she  sold  papers  there 
with  great  success.  She  was  quick  to  see  the  customer,  simple  and 
childlike  in  her  replies  and  gained  many  friends.  At  times  an 
older  brother  came  with  her  to  her  corner,  but  generally  she  came 
alone.  Gradually  she  lost  the  simplicity  of  the  early  days,  she 
was  pert  in  her  answer  and  brazen  in  her  request.  She  would 
saunter  into  the  saloons  with  the  men  and  drink  "pop"  with  them 
at  the  bar,  finally  her  brother  saw  that  she  could  stand  that 
kind  of  a  life  no  longer,  and  she  was  taken  from  the  street. 

If  we  leave  the  street  without  protection  we  shall  have  new 
problems  with  each  passing  year.  It  is  obviously  the  duty  of 
every  American  city  to  face  this  situation  without  delay.  The 
conditions  in  Chicago  are  no  worse  than  in  a  multitude  of  other 
cities  in  the  East  and  West.  A  census  of  newsboys  taken  on  the 
streets  of  Buffalo  during  the  month  of  March,  1903,  which  aimed 


CHILD   LABOR  103 

to  be  representative  of  the  2,000  newsboys  in  that  city,  showed 
that  out  of  the  328  boys,  273  or  83  per  cent,  were  under  fourteen 
and  eighty-four  or  25  per  cent,  were  under  ten  years  of  age.  Out 
of  these  eighty-four  it  was  found  that  three  were  orphans. 
There  were  only  eight  full  orphans  and  twenty-two  half  orphans 
out  of  the  328  who  were  examined. 

Although  the  dangers  of  the  street  trades  are  not  determined 
alone  by  the  size  of  the  city,  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  in  a  city 
where  there  are  many  editions  night  and  morning  the  chances  of 
abuses  are  increased  many  times.  New  York  City  has  seen  this, 
but  has  delayed  long  to  seek  remedies  despite  the  almost  unan- 
imous support  of  the  press.  It  is  a  sad  commentary  on  our  city 
civilization  that  the  street  child  has  not  been  cared  for  before  this. 
It  is  difficult  for  the  uninitiated  to  realize  the  number  of  children 
who  are  subject  to  the  temptation  of  a  city  like  New  York,  or 
who  are  lacking  in  those  restraints  of  home  and  school  which 
are  so  necessary  for  the  development  of  a  strong  character.  The 
results  of  this  life  are  repeated  almost  without  the  slighest 
variation.  The  New  York  Juvenile  Asylum  reported,  "that  out 
of  the  311  boys  who  had  worked  at  various  trades  prior  to  their 
commitment,  125  or  40  per  cent,  had  been  newsboys.  Out  of  this 
number,  eighty  had  begun  between  four  and  twelve  years  of  age." 
The  hospitals,  the  public  schools  and  the  courts  all  have  the 
same  story  to  tell  of  diseased  bodies,  of  incapacitated  minds 
and  bad  morals,  the  gift  of  the  street  to  its  unrestrained  children. 

The  attempts  to  remedy  this  condition  have  been  few  in 
number  and  rather  unsatisfactory  in  results.  In  1902  Boston 
adopted  a  system  almost  identical  with  that  used  in  Manchester, 
Liverpool  and  London,  England.  The  city  ordinance  of  Boston 
provides  that  "no  minor  under  the  age  of  fourteen  shall,  in  any 
street  or  public  place  in  the  city  of  Boston,  work  as  a  bootblack 
or  sell  or  expose  for  sale  any  books,  newspapers,  pamphlet,  fuel, 
fruit  or  provisions,  unless  he  has  a  minor's  license."  The  regula- 
tion of  1902  provides,  "that  the  principal  of  a  school  or  a  district 
in  which  a  minor  under  fourteen  is  a  pupil,  shall  receive  the  ap- 
plication in  duplicate  of  the  parent  or  guardian  of  such  a  minor 
or  of  any  responsible  citizen  of  Boston,  and  shall  forward  the 
same  to  the  superintendent  of  schools,   accompanied  by  a  cer- 


104  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

tificate  of  the  teacher  in  whose  class  the  minor  may  be  and  the 
principal  of  the  school  stating  that  they  approve  the  granting  of 
such  license  to  said  minor."  No  minor  shall  work  as  a  newsboy 
or  as  a  bootblack  unless  he  is  over  ten  years  of  age,  and  shall 
not  sell  any  other  article  unless  he  is  over  twelve  years  of  age. 

The  legislature  of  New  York,  in  April,  1903,  amended  the 
labor  law  relating  to  children  employed  in  the  streets  and  public 
places  in  cities  of  the  first-class  (New  York  and  Buffalo),  The 
amendment,  "that  no  male  child  under  ten  and  no  girl  under 
sixteen  shall  in  any  city  of  the  first-class  sell  or  expose  for  sale 
newspapers  in  any  street  or  public  place.  No  male  child,  actually 
or  apparently  under  fourteen  years  of  age,  shall  sell  or  expose 
for  sale  unless  provided  with  a  permit  and  a  badge."  No  child  to 
whom  such  a  permit  and  badge  are  issued  shall  sell  papers  after 
ten  o'clock  at  night. 

These  laws  are  both  definite  and  comprehensive.  They  mark 
a  welcome  advance  in  preventive  legislation.  Their  enforcement, 
however,  has  been  a  very  diflficult  problem.  Many  methods  have 
been  tried.  The  Boston  law  was  to  be  enforced  by  the  board  of 
aldermen.  This  proved  unsatisfactory,  and  in  1902  a  law  was 
passed,  transferring  the  licensing  of  bootblacks  from  the  board 
of  aldermen  to  the  school  board.  The  committee  on  newsboys 
reported  in  1903,  "that  three-quarters  of  the  boys  do  not  obey 
the  law,  and  its  agents  on  fourteen  consecutive  days  in  Septem- 
ber, 1903,  made  observations  with  the  following  results:  Number 
of  boys  not  having  badges  in  sight,  140;  number  having  no 
badges  or  license,  63;  number  selling  for  other  boys,  ro;  number 
under  age,  33;  number  selling  after  8.30  p.  m.,  117. 

As  a  result  of  this  investigation  a  special  officer  was  appointed 
who  had  special  charge  of  the  enforcement  of  the  law.  Subse- 
quently considerable  progress  was  made.  During  the  past  year 
there  have  been  sixty-five  arrests,  all  of  which  except  one  have 
been  fined.  Nine  have  been  arrested  for  not  having  their  badges 
in  sight.  Thirty-seven  were  unlicensed  and  ten  were  arrested 
for  congregating  on  the  street.  There  have  been  but  four  who 
have  been  arrested  for  the  second  time  and  two  for  the  third. 

The  enforcement  of  the  law  in  New  York  has  been  timid  and 
ineffectual.     During  the  first  few  days  after  the  law  went  into 


CHILD   LABOR  105 

effect  in  September,  1903,  the  city  and  the  street  took  it  seriously. 
Then  it  was  discovered  that  the  public  schools  could  not  even 
seat  those  who  had  already  applied.  There  was  little  room  for 
the  truant  newsboy  even  if  he  had  been  anxious  to  attend  school. 
The  result  was  a  system  of  half  sessions.  This  was  the  first  ex- 
cuse. For  whenever  a  boy  was  found  in  the  morning  on  the 
street,  he  invariably  belonged  to  the  afternoon  division  and  vicer 
versa.  The  truancy  force  was  too  small  to  enforce  the  com- 
pulsory education  law  as  it  should  be  enforced.  The  number  of 
violations  was  constantly  increasing  and  the  police  were  only 
making  sporadic  attempts  to  check  the  return  to  old  conditions. 
The  result  was  inevitable,  and  New  York  added  just  one  more 
to  the  number  of  her  disrespected  laws. 

In  Buffalo  the  same  law  had  a  better  effect.  The  truant  of- 
ficer who  distributed  the  permits  for  the  Board  of  Education  was 
also  a  member  of  the  juvenile  court,  thus  assuring  the  co-opera- 
tion of  the  two.  The  boys  whose  labor  was  chiefly  affected  by  the 
new  law  worked  within  well  defined  limits.  One  thousand  eight 
hundred  and  sixty  boys  applied  for  permits.  A  much  larger  num- 
ber than  was  thought  to  be  engaged  on  the  street  of  that  city. 
These  boys  received  the  careful  attention  of  the  school  author- 
ity, as  well  as  the  police.  The  principals  of  the  public  schools 
testify  that  there  was  an  immediate  and  continuous  decrease  in 
the  amount  of  truancy. 

The  small  boy  disappeared  almost  entirely  from  the  street  and 
the  vagrant  and  truant  newsboys  were  not  difficult  to  detect.  Al- 
though there  may  be  a  few  violations  of  the  law  in  that  city,  the 
character  of  the  street  trades  has  materially  changed.  This  is 
due  largely  to  the  fact  that  the  school  authorities  have  taken  a 
hand  in  the  enforcement  and  have  not  left  it  entirely  to  the  police. 
Even  the  casual  observer  who  is  unfamiliar  with  the  law  has 
seen  and  commented  upon  the  great  change  that  the  law  has  made 
in  that  city. 

The  laws  of  Boston  or  New  York  are  well  adapted  to  the 
needs  of  any  city,  no  matter  what  its  size  may  be.  The  universal 
adoption  of  this  law  in  other  American  cities  would  do  much  to 
obviate  those  abuses  which  are  so  familiar  to  the  streets  of  the 
American  cities. 


io6  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:  77-83.  January,  1907. 

Children  in  the  Glass  Works  of  Illinois.  Mrs.  Harriet  Van  der 

Vaart. 

All  who  have  had  experience  in  child  labor  legislation  know 
that  each  state — sometimes  a  group  of  states — has  its  own  par- 
ticular problem  to  solve,  relating  to  the  employment  of  children 
in  the  industries  of  that  state.  In  some  states  it  is  the  mining 
industry;  in  others  the  cotton  industry,  and  in  Illinois,  as  in  many 
others,  it  is  the  glass  industry. 

When  we  were  working  for  our  present  law,  the  glass  manu- 
facturers of  Illinois  kept  some  one  at  Springfield  to  watch  and 
oppose  each  step  of  the  law,  and  in*  all  of  the  arguments  they 
always  closed  with,  "If  this  law  goes  into  effect  it  will  drive  this 
industry  out  of  the  state." 

Perhaps  all  do  not  know  the  character  of  the  work  in  a  glass 
factory.  Every  glass  blower  has  to  have  two  or  three  boys  to 
assist  him  in  the  work.  The  glass  blower  pours  the  molten 
glass  into  the  molds;  a  boy  sits  and  closes  the  molds;  another 
one  picks  the  bottles  out  of  the  molds  and  puts  them  on  a  long 
stick  or  handle,  and  puts  them  in  front  of  a  small  furnace, 
which  is  called  "the  glory  hole,"  where  the  top  or  the  neck  of 
the  bottle  is  finished.  Then  they  are  placed  on  a  long  tray,  and 
the  boys  carry  them  into  the  annealing  furnaces,  where  thqjr 
are  gradually  cooled. 

One  of  the  arguments  advanced  by  those  who  are  most  inter- 
ested in  keeping  boys  in  the  glass  factories  is  that  it  requires  the 
agility  and  activity  of  boys  to  carry  these  bottles  to  the  anneal- 
ing furnaces,  for  they  cannot  get  men  or  adults  to  run  as  these 
boys  do  most  of  the  time  between  the  ovens  and  the  furnaces. 
The  day  shift  of  one  week  is  always  the  night  shift  of  the  next, 
which  means  that  the  boy  who  worked  during  the  day  this 
week,  the  next  week  will  work  at  night.  The  night  shift  gen- 
erally leaves  the  factory  at  half-past  three  or  four  o'clock  in 
the  morning.  Now  it  is  very  easy  to  see  that  coming  away 
from  those  heated  furnaces  out  into  the  chilly,  cool  air  of 
the  winter  morning  makes  the  boys  liable  to  colds  and  pul- 
monary diseases. 


CHILD   LABOR  107 

The  moral  influences  surrounding  the  boys  in  a  glass  factory 
are  generally  bad.  Anyone  who  visits  a  glass  factory  will  see 
little  saloons  or  grog  shops  all  around  the  factory,  and  while  a 
great  many  factories  prohibit  liquor  being  brought  into  the  fac- 
tory, all  do  not.  In  some  factories  the  boys  carry  the  liquor,  but 
where  it  is  prohibited  this  temptation  meets  them  when  they 
first  leave  the  factory  and,  coming  out  into  the  chilly  morning 
air,  debilitated  by  the  labor  and  heat,  of  course  the  temptation  is 
great  to  take  something  that  will  stimulate  them.  Around  all 
the  factories  there  is  a  high  board  fence,  and  on  top  of  this 
fence  are  two  or  three  barbed  wires.  When  I  inquired  at  one 
of  the  factories  the  reasons  for  this,  one  of  the  reasons  given 
me  by  one  factory  was,  "Well,  it  keeps  the  boys  in  for  one  thing." 
The  glass  blowers  are  very  dependent  upon  their  helpers,  and  if 
the  boys  leave  at  a  critical  time  the  glass  blowers  are  obliged  to 
stop  their  work.  Of  course,  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  this  is  the 
only  reason  for  this  high   fence,  but  it  is  doubtless  one. 

The  work  of  the  boys  in  the  factory  is  irregular  and  requires 
no  training  nor  skill.  In  some  factories  where  I  visited  I  found 
that  boys  received  forty  cents  extra  at  the  close  of  the  week  if 
they  worked  the  entire  week  and  if  they  did  good  work. 

Through  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee  two  years  ago 
I  was  permitted  to  visit  a  large  number  of  the  glass  factories  in 
both  Indiana  and  Illinois.  I  not  only  visited  the  factories,  but  the 
homes  also,  to  learn  the  health  of  the  child,  the  grade  he  was  in 
when  he  left  school,  the  conditions  of  the  factory,  if  he  worked 
nights,  and  his  wage.  These  and  many  other  questions  the 
schedules  of  the  Child  Labor  Committee  required  to  be  answered. 
rXiring  this  investigation  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  char- 
acter of  the  young  help  in  the  glass  factory  was  greatly 
changed ;  that  the  most  intelligent  parents  throughout  the  country 
were  becoming  convinced  that  the  glass  factories  were  not  the 
places  for  their  boys.  It  was  very  seldom  that  the  cliild  of  a  glass 
blower  was  found  in  the  factory.  Generally  the  children  of  glass 
blowers  were  kept  in  school.  Mr.  Root,  of  the  Root  Glass  Com- 
pany, said :  "The  smaller  number  of  boys  that  are  found  in  the 
factories  throughout  the  country  is  due  to  the  changed  conditions 
of  labor.     The  large  glass  industries  attract  to  them  large  num- 


io8  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

bers  of  foreigners,  and  the  American   boys  are  not  being  em- 
ployed in  the  glass  factories  as  they  were  some  time  ago." 

I  was  told  a  number  times  that  the  Glass  Blowers'  Union  was 
the  only  thing  that  kept  the  intelligent  workmen  in  the  trade,  and 
that  manufacturers  never  objected  to  this  union,  because  they 
recognized  this  fact:  it  is  the  only  inducement  that  is  oflfered  to 
intelligent  men  and  to  parents  to  allow  their  boys  to  enter  the 
work.  The  apprenticeship  system  among  the  glass  blowers  is 
such  that  a  very  long  time  is  required,  and  it  is  a  fact  that  a  very 
few  of  the  boys  who  enter  the  glass  factories  ever  become  ap- 
prentices. 

One  manufacturer  admitted  to  me  that  the  boys  in  the  glass 
industry  generally  were  smaller  and  not  as  well  developed  as  the 
boys  who  had  lived  a  normal  life  outside.  He  said  he  thought 
this  did  not  argue  that  they  were  not  as  well. 

Mr.  Root  did  not  object  to  the  prevailing  laws  as  long  as  his 
competitors  were  subject  to  the  same  restrictions ;  he  did  not 
think  that  a  law  prohibiting  boys  under  sixteen  from  being  im- 
ployed  could  be  enforced.  "He  said  he  knew  of  one  manufacturer 
where  there  had  been  returned  thirty-two  indictments  against 
him,  not  one  of  which  had  ever  been  brought  to  trial. 

At  the  time  of  my  investigation  I  was  convinced  that  there 
was  some  degree  of  reason  in  his  remarks.  At  least  I  felt  quite 
sure  that  the  glass  manufacturers  were  not  obeying  the  laws  in 
this  respect. 

I  talked  with  the  president  of  one  of  the  large  glass  blowers' 
unions  in  Indiana.  He  said  that  he  had  been  in  that  particular 
factory  for  three  years ;  that  during  that  time  he  had  never  seen 
an  inspector  or  the  results  of  a  visit  from  one;  that  in  the  fac- 
tories where  affidavits  were  required  the  manufacturer  simply 
sent  home  a  paper  by  one  of  the  children  which  was  signed  by  the 
parent  and  brought  back. 

In  one  of  the  factories  in  Indiana  I  insisted  upon  seeing  the 
affidavits.  There  was  a  little  bundle  of  affidavits  brought  out  to 
me  that  were  several  years  old,  none  of  which  could  apply  to  any 
of  the  children  that  were  at  that  time  employed  in  that  factory. 

The  president  of  the  union  in  Indiana  said  that  he  had  worked 
in  Alton  as  well  as  in  Indiana,  and  he  thought  that  the  conditions 


CHILD   LABOR  109 

were  much  worse  in  Indiana  than  they  were  in  Illinois.  Night 
work  is  not  prohibited  in  Indiana.  It  was  quite  the  customary 
thing  for  school  children  to  go  into  the  factory  at  night  and  work 
until  eleven  and  twelve  o'clock  and  go  to  school  during  the  day. 
This  would  be  found  especially  true  on  Thursday  and  Friday 
nights. 

I  went  to  the  inspector's  office  in  Indiana  and  talked  with  him 
in  regard  to  the  condition  in  Indiana,  and  he  told  me  that  he  only 
had  five  inspectors ;  that  with  five  inspectors  a  state  the  size  of 
Indiana  could  not  be  inspected.  This  is  something  for  us  to  con- 
sider. The  factory  force  should  have  the  number  of  inspectors 
that  is  necessary  for  thorough  work  and  a  sufficient  appropriation 
to  carry  on  the  work. 

The  best  factory  I  found  was  in  Indiana — the  Ball  Brothers 
factory — which  I  hope  is  a  sample  of  the  future  glass  factory, 
where  machinery  is  gradually  taking  the  place  of  the  boy.  In 
talking  with  Mr.  Ball,  he  said  that  he  thought  that  the  time  was 
not  far  distant  when  machinery  would  take  the  place  of  boys  in 
all  glass  factories. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  glass  manufacturers  are  not  only  not 
living  up  to  the  law  themselves,  but  that  they  are  educating  chil- 
dren to  be  law-breakers.  When  we  visited  Alton  two  years  ago  we 
went  through  the  factory,  both  in  the  afternoon  and  in  the  even- 
ing, and  we  found  a  model  factory.  The  next  day  when  I  was 
visiting  in  the  homes  of  the  children  who  worked  in  the  factory, 
in  order  that  I  might  gain  the  data  required,  I  was  told  in  quite 
a  number  of  homes  that  this  factory  had  known  that  we  were  to 
visit  them,  and  had  been  prepared  for  our  visit.  After  I  had 
received  a  great  deal  of  this  information  I  went  back  to  the  fac- 
tory and  made  known  what  I  had  discovered  during  the  after- 
noon :  that  I  had  learned  that  they  were  prepared  for  our  visit. 
Mr.  Smith,  of  the  Alton  Glass  Factory,  said  to  me:  "But,  madam, 
if  you  were  informed  that  the  enemy  was  in  the  field,  what  would 
you  do?  Wouldn't  you  take  all  precautions  that  were  necessary 
to  protect  yourself?" 

When  I  was  asked  to  talk  upon  this  subject  at  the  Third  Na- 
tional Child  Labor  Convention  I  did  not  think  it  would  be  fair  to 
speak  upon  the  conditions  as  I   found  them  two  years  ago.   It 


no  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

seemed  obligatory  at  least  to  visit  the  largest  plant,  the  Alton 
glass  factory.  I  reached  Alton  last  Wednesday  morning,  at  eight 
minutes  past  six.  I  took  a  car  and  went  down  at  once  to  the  glass 
factory.  On  the  way  there  a  gentlemen  in  the  car  told  me  that 
a  few  days  before  he  had  seen  two  little,  very  ragged,  dirty  boys 
taking  the  dinner  out  to  their  father  in  the  factory,  and  he  asked 
them  why  they  were  not  in  school.  They  said  they  did  not  have 
clothes  to  go  to  school,  and  one  of  them  told  him  that  the 
oldest  one  would  be  old  enough  next  year  to  go  to  work.  He 
told  me  that  these  two  boys  were  growing  up  there  without  any 
education  and  were  being  kept  at  home  for  the  sake  of  carrying 
their  father's  dinner  every  day. 

When  I  arrived  at  the  glass  factory  it  was  about  half-past  six. 
There  are  two  large  gates  at  the  Alton  factory  where  the  em- 
ployees enter  to  work.  I  stood  at  the  upper  gate  from  half -past 
six  until  a  few  minutes  past  seven,  until  all  the  employees  had 
entered  for  work.  I  saw  perhaps  two  or  three  hundred  em- 
ployees enter  the  yard.  I  did  not  keep  an  actual  tally  of  the 
children  that  entered.  But  I  am  sure  that  I  am  giving  a  con- 
servative estimate  when  I  say  that  the  age  of  at  least  forty  or 
fifty  of  the  children  that  went  into  that  yard  would  have  been 
questioned  by  any  disinterested  person. 

I  was  told  that  our  factory  inspectors  had  been  through  Alton 
only  a  week  before,  and  had  found  quite  a  number  of  violations, 
and  that  they  had  quite  heavily  fined  the  firm.  Perhaps  that  is  the 
reason  why  I  saw  so  many  that  morning.  I  presume  it  is  quite 
natural  for  a  factory  to  feel  that  after  a  visit  from  the  inspector 
they  certainly  have  a  little  time  when  they  need  not  be  so  strict. 

In  the  forenoon  of  this  same  day  I  went  back  to  the  Alton 
Glass  Factory  and  asked  if  I  might  go  through  the  factory.  I  was 
quite  peremptorily  refused.  Mr.  Levis  said  he  didn't  think  it 
would  do  any  good  ;  that  they  had  been  painted  quite  as  black  as 
they  could  be,  and  he  wasn't  willing  for  me  to  go  through  their 
factory. 

Not  far  away  from  where  the  factory  is  located  there  is  a  tract 
of  land  that  is  very  low  and  swampy,  a  very  uncomfortable 
place  to  live,  but  where  a  great  many  of  the  people  live  whose 


CHILD    LABOR  iii 

children  work  in  factories.  I  went  down  into  that  locality  and 
visited  from  house  to  house.  At  the  second  house  I  went  into  the 
sister  told  me  that  her  brother  was  asleep ;  that  he  had  worked 
the  night  before  in  the  factory.  I  asked  her  how  old  he  was ;  she 
said  he  was  fifteen.  The  next  house  that  I  went  into  there  was 
a  small  boy  in  the  room  who,  his  mother  said,  was  twelve.  The 
boy  said  he  had  been  sent  home  from  the  factory  that  morning 
because  the  inspectors  were  there.  I  asked  her  if  he  had  an 
affidavit;  she  said,  no.  I  asked  him:  "How  long  have  you  worked 
in  the  factory?"  He  said:  "I've  worked  here  one  month — one 
week,  days,  and  one  week,  nights."  In  going  from  house  to  house 
I  found  a  number  of  children  whose  mothers  told  me  they  were 
not  sixteen;  they  were  fourteen  and  fifteen,  who  had  worked  all 
night  the  night  before  in  the  factory.  It  seems  to  me  from  what  I 
saw  and  heard  that  the  Alton  glass  works  are  not  living  up  to 
the  requirements  of  the  law. 

Being  so  near  East  St.  Louis,  I  also  visited  the  glass  factory 
there.  On  my  way  to  the  office  I  was  overtaken  by  two  girls,  who 
told  me  that  anyone  could  walk  in,  and  one  of  them  said,  "I  will 
take  you  where  the  children  work,  we  girls  hide  the  kids  when 
the  factory  inspectors  come  in."  I  said:  "Why  do  you  do  it?"  "O, 
well,  I  would  like  to  be  hid  if  I  was  their  age;  but,"  she  said,  '"I 
think  it  is  a  mistake  to  send  them  to  work  so  young.  They  are 
employing  boys  for  thirty-five  and  forty  cents  a  day  to  do  men's 
work." 

It  was  the  time  of  recess,  and  at  the  door  of  the  factory  there 
was  quite  a  large  group— at  least  ten  or  twelve  very  small  boys— 
who,  at  the  sound  of  the  whistle,  scampered  back  to  the  furnaces. 
When  I  went  into  the  factory  the  foreman  tried  immediately  to 
attract  my  attention.  He  said:  "I  want  to  show  you  where  they 
are  putting  glass  into  the  furnace  to  be  melted  and  where  they  are 
packing,  that  you  may  know  the  work  is  not  hard."  I  saw  at  a 
glance  that  he  was  trying  to  give  these  boys  time  to  get  out  of 
the  way,  but  I  saw  a  number  of  boys  that  any  one  would  have 
said  were  certainly  very  small  to  be  working  in  a  glass  factory. 

From  this  investigation  and  my  own  judgment,  I  have  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  glass  manufacturers  throughout 
the  country  are  not  obeying  the  laws  for  the  regulation  of  child 


112  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

labor ;  that  they  are  not  only  not  living  up  to  the  requirements  of 
the  law,  but  that  they  are  teaching  our  young  children  that  it  is 
not  necessary  to  obey  laws. 

Education  is  helping  to  eliminate  the  American  child  from  the 
glass  factories,  and  that  education  must  be  extended.  We  must 
have  a  type  of  public  school  that  will  appeal  to  our  foreigners; 
we  must  have  more  industrial  education ;  we  must  have  trade 
schools.  If  the  parents  and  children  were  convinced  that  continu- 
ing in  school  meant  industrial  training;  that  it  meant  a  step  nearer 
receiving  a  living  wage,  and  entering  a  more  skilled  trade,  our 
factory  and  our  compulsory  education  laws  would  be  more  easily 
enforced  than  they  are  at  present. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33:  Sup.   1 16-21. 
March,  1909. 

Overworked  Children  on  the  Farm  and  in  the  School. 
Woods  Hutchinson. 

Those  of  us  who  happen  to  have  been  born  or  raised  upon 
a  farm,  a  real  farm,  run  to  earn  a  living  and  not  as  a  healthful 
and  very  expensive  amusement,  can  promptly  and  feelingly  testify 
that  it  is  not  half  so  rose-colored  as  it  is  usually  pictured  in 
literature  or  through  the  pearly  mists  of  our  boyhood  memories. 
Farmwork  is  the  hardest  and  most  disagreeable  work  there  is, 
with  the  longest  hours  and  the  poorest  pay.  Much  of  it  has  to 
be  done  before  daylight  or  after  dark  in  mud,  in  snow,  in  storm 
and  slush.  Farm  bedrooms  are  cold  and  badly  ventilated,  and 
the  sheer  discomfort,  verging  at  times  upon  agony,  of  getting  out 
of  bed  on  a  winter's  morning  and  starting  the  fire  with  damp 
wood  in  a  kitchen  that  feels  like  a  cold  storage  plant  in  January, 
and  then  going  out  to  thaw  the  pump,  shovel  a  path  to  the  barn, 
feed  the  shivering,  staring,  coated  horses,  and  milk  half  a  dozen 
frost-rimmed  cows,  is  still  fresh  in  our  memories.  These  and  a 
score  of  similarly  cheerful  and  agreeable  memories  rise  before  us 
like  a  nightmare.  It  makes  little  difference  where  we  may  have 
gone,  or  what  our  lot  in  life,  we  never  have  had  to  do  anything  so 
disagreeable  or  abominable  since.  Moreover,  while  there  is  an 
abundance  of  food  growing  upon  the  farm,  that  food  is  raised  for 


CHILD   LABOR  113 

sale  and  wherever  the  balance  is  a  narrow  one  between  the  in- 
come and  expenditure,  as  it  is  in  most  of  farmers'  families,  the 
bulk  and  the  best  of  that  food  that  will  bring  a  good  price  in 
the  market  is  and  must  be  sold,  leaving  only  the  poorer  quality 
for  home  use.  In  short,  the  farmer  who  farms  for  a  living,  or 
who  expects  to  make  money,  must  in  the  terse  language  of  the 
corner  grocery,  "do  all  his  own  work,  and  live  on  what  he  can't 
sell." 

This  stern  necessity  reacts  upon  the  children  of  the  farm  just 
as  it  does  upon  those  of  the  factory  town,  and  the  physician  in 
country  practice  can  show  you  in  the  remotest  and  most  peaceful 
country  district  as  severe  cases  of  malnutrition,  of  rickets,  of 
anaemia,  of  diseases  of  the  joints  and  the  spine,  and  of  stunted 
development,  as  you  can  find  in  a  city  hospital.  There  will  not  be 
so  many  of  them,  but  they  will  be  there  nevertheless,  except  in 
unusually  prosperous  and  well-to-do  neighborhoods.  In  the  ag- 
gregate, I  think  it  would  be  safe  to  say  that  they  equal,  if  they 
do  not  far  exceed,  the  defectives  and  the  degenerates  of  our  much 
smaller  slum  population.  Unquestionably,  a  large  majority  of  the 
work  done  by  children  upon  the  farm,  being  for  the  most  part  in 
the  open  air,  and  under  the  care  and  protection  of  their  own  par- 
ents or  relatives,  is  not  only  not  harmful  but  decidedly  beneficial ; 
but  we  must  not  shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  young  children 
and  boys  and  girls  are  overworked  upon  farms,  badly  fed,  and 
deprived  of  proper  amusement,  and  social  and  intellectual  oppor- 
tunities to  a  most  undesirable  degree,  and  that  this  is  one  of  the 
most  potent  reasons  for  the  oft-deplored  exodus  from  the  farm 
to  the  city.  When  it  comes  to  overworking  and  underfeeding 
his  children,  making  home  hateful  and  life  one  joyless,  monoto- 
nous grind,  a  certain  class  of  farmers  has  no  right  to  throw 
stones  at  any  factory  operative,  miner  or  even  sweat-shop  worker. 
If  President  Roosevelt's  commission  on  country  life  will  succeed 
in  reforming  or  even  improving  this  type  of  man — you  all  know 
him,  whose  barn  is  four  times  as  big  as  his  house,  and  his  real  pets 
and  prides  his  horses  and  pigs — it  will  do  as  much  good  as  any 
factor>'  legislation  that  can  be  placed  upon  the  statute  books. 

Bad  as  the  hours  and  conditions  under  which  the  children  in 
the  much-berated  cotton  mills  of  our  Southern  states  live  and 


114  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

work,  it  is  a  question  in  the  minds  of  competent  physicians  who 
have  visited  the  neighborhoods,  whether,  in  many  instances,  the 
children  are  not  better  off  in  point  of  food,  education,  recreation 
and  opportunities  for  development,  than  they  are,  upon  the  small, 
barren,  poverty-stricken  farms  of  the  average  "cracker"  or  "poor 
white"  of  those  states.  By  all  means  let  us  insist  upon  the  strict- 
est regulations  to  protect  the  health,  the  welfare  and  morals  of 
the  children  in  those  mills,  or  let  us  remember  that  we  are  not 
restoring  them  to  a  perfect  hygienic  paradise  if  we  send  them 
back  to  the  farms. 

The  same  thing  must  be  borne  in  mind  in  regard  to  the  other 
great  alternative  to  child  labor,  the  place  to  which  the  child  must 
be  sent  if  he  be  taken  out  of  the  factory — the  school.  As  things 
stand  at  present,  it  is  my  unwilling  judgment  that  while  the 
factory  may  become  a  sweat  shop,  the  average  school  in  the 
United  States  to-day  is  little  better  than  a  mental  treadmill  for 
the  average  boy  of  the  working  classes  after  twelve  years  of  age ; 
that  the  education  is  so  purely  formal,  so  bookish,  so  ladylike,  so 
irrational  and  impractical  in  a  word,  that  it  stunts  his  mind,  be- 
wilders his  senses  and  fills  him  with  a  dislike  for  real  education 
and  training,  which  warps  him  mentally  as  badly  as  the  factory 
does  physically.  Many  a  boy  of  this  class  and  age,  as  our 
antiquated  curriculum  stands  at  present,  is  better  off  working  six 
hours  a  day,  in  a  well-ventilated,  thoroughly  sanitary  workshop, 
conducted  on  kindly  and  intelligent  principles,  than  he  would  be 
in  the  schoolroom  droning  and  day-dreaming  over  classical  ab- 
surdities, in  which  he  can  find  no  interest  nor  profit.  The  motto 
of  the  school  is  "By  books  ye  are  saved."  But  it  is  a  case  of  "the 
letter  that  killeth."  In  the  total,  the  school  is  doing  more  physical 
damage  to  our  children  than  the  factory. 

What  the  boy  wants  is  not  books  but  life,  not  words  but 
things,  and  as  matters  are  arranged  at  present,  he  has  to  leave 
the  schoolroom  and  go  into  the  factory  or  the  shop  to  get  them. 
The  average  schoolroom  is  preferable  to  the  shop  or  factory  for 
the  working  boy  or  girl  after  the  thirteenth  year,  in  but  little 
more  than  the  fact  that  it  protects  him  from  physical  overstrain 
and  its  deadening  six-hour  confinement  at  hard  and  uninterest- 
ing tasks,  which  is  a  heavy  offset  to  this. 


CHILD   LABOR  115 

Not  only  so,  but  this  utter  lack  of  appeal  of  the  public  school 
curriculum  to  the  working  boy  of  thirteen  or  more  is  one  of  the 
principal  causes  of  the  rush  of  child  labor  into  the  shop  and  the 
factory.  Taking  it  the  world  over,  the  principal  cause  of  harmful 
child  labor  is  poverty ;  the  stern  need  of  even  the  pittance  that 
can  be  earned  by  the  child  to  enable  the  rest  of  the  family  to 
live,  not  unmixed  with  greed  on  the  part  of  a  certain  class  of 
parents,  eager  to  recoup  themselves  for  the  expense  and  trouble 
of  rearing  a  large  family.  In  European  countries  the  value  of 
the  child's  earnings  to  the  parents  is  the  principal  motive  for 
early  work.  In  this  country,  however,  we  are  more  fortunately 
situated.  Wages  are  higher,  so  that  the  father's  income  is  more 
often  or  more  nearly  adequate  to  support  the  entire  family,  and 
the  average  of  intelligence  and  humanity  in  the  parents  of  the 
working  class  is  much  higher  so  that  they  can  see  the  advantage 
of  giving  their  children  the  best  possible  start  in  life. 

Statistical  investigations  of  this  point  appear  to  have  been 
made  only  upon  a  very  limited  scale.  But  so  far  as  they  have 
gone  they  bring  out  the  interesting  fact  that  from  fifty  to  seventy 
per  cent,  of  the  child  labor  at  too  early  years  is  due  to  the 
initiative  not  of  the  parent  but  of  the  child.  The  causes  alleged 
by  the  children  for  their  choice  were  most  suggestive ;  while 
many  of  them  simply  wanted  to  earn  money,  to  have  more  to 
spend,  to  get  on  in  the  world,  to  buy  better  clothes  or  went  just 
because  their  friends  and  comrades  did,  the  largest  single  group 
gave  it  as  their  reason  that  they  were  tired  of  school,  that  they 
could  not  get  on  at  school,  that  they  could  not  understand  their 
studies  or  even,  horihile  dictti,  that  they  got  sick  at  school — 
they  seem  to  stand  confinement  of  the  shop  better  than  that  of 
the  schoolroom.  In  many  of  these  cases,  the  parents  were  not 
only  perfectly  willing  for  their  children  to  continue  at  school, 
but  were  paying  out  money  for  instruction  in  bookkeeping, 
shorthand,  music,  drawing,  etc.,  in  addition  to  letting  the  children 
keep  their  wages.  In  short,  the  conclusion,  strange  as  it  may 
seem  to  many,  is  almost  inevitable  that  if  we  rationalize  and 
modernize  the  curriculum  of  our  public  schools,  we  should  cut 
the  foundation  from  under  one-half  if  not  two-thirds  of  the 
child-labor  tendency.     In  fine,  as  our  most  intelligent  teachers. 


ii6  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

our  most  thoughtful  students  of  pedagogy,  our  physicians,  our 
sanitarians,  our  child-labor  students,  have  united  for  years  in  de- 
claring the  most  vital,  the  most  crying  demand  before  the  Ameri- 
can Commonwealth  to-day  is  to  make  our  public  schools  educate 
the  whole  child,  and  not  merely  the  expanded  bulb  at  the  upper 
end  of  him.  Train  him  physically  and  emotionally  as  vi^ell  as 
mentally.  Substitute  the  playground,  the  garden,  the  shop  for 
the  book-school.  Fit  him  for  life  and  for  action,  instead  of  for 
contemplation  and  culture ;  for  service  instead  of  superiority ; 
for  work,  not  for  display. 

Annals   of   the   American   Academy.  35:   Sup.   145-9. 
March,  1910. 

Child  Labor  in  Home  Industries.     Mary  \^an  Kleeck. 

The  present  employment  of  children  in  tenements  in  New  York 
City  gives  no  ground  for  optimism  regarding  New  York  State's 
method  of  regulating  home  work.  A  casual  investigator  who 
chooses  to  walk  through  the  crowded  tenement  districts  will  find 
children  at  work  who  would  not  be  permitted  to  enter  a  factory. 
He  will  see  women  and  children  carrying  bundles  of  clothing  or 
boxes  of  artificial  flowers  from  workshop  to  home,  and  if  he 
should  follow  any  of  them  he  would  learn  something  of  the  sys- 
tem of  industry  which  makes  child  labor  still  possible  in  New 
York  State. 

Two  days  ago  one  of  my  fellow-workers  visited  a  family  liv- 
ing on  Thompson  street.  It  was  after  school  hours.  She  found 
a  mother  and  four  children  making  artificial  flowers.  The  oldest 
girl  was  eleven  years  old.  Her  sister  was  nine,  her  little  brother 
was  seven,  and  a  little  sister  was  five.  The  three  older  children 
had  just  come  home  from  school,  but  the  youngest  child  was  too 
young  to  go,  and  worked  all  day  separating  the  petals  of  artificial 
flowers.  The  oldest  child  of  eleven  was  deformed.  She  was  not 
larger  than  a  child  of  five. 

The  mother  and  four  children  have  set  themselves  a  certain 
allotment  of  work  to  finish  each  day,  and  the  book  in  which  their 
earnings  are  recorded  by  the  employer  says  that  those  earnings 
are  sixty  cents  a  day.     To  earn  that  sixty  cents  a  day  they  must 


CHILD   LABOR  117 

make  six  dozen  wreaths  of  daisies,  three  or  four  pieces  to  each 
daisy,  and  thirty-nine  daisies  on  each  wreath.  The  father  is  a 
ragman  earning  six  dollars  a  week.  The  brother  is  out  of  work. 
The  mother  and  children  work  until  ten  or  eleven  o'clock  at 
night,  and  what  they  do  not  finish  at  night  they  must  get  up  in 
time  to  finish  in  the  morning  before  school  begins.  The  little 
girl,  Angelina,  said  she  did  the  work  the  teacher  gave  her  to  do 
at  home  before  school  in  the  morning.  "This  morning,  first  I 
did  the  writing,"  she  said,  "then  I  did  the  two  times,  and  then  the 
three  times,  so  I  won't  have  so  much  to  do  to-morrow.  I  like 
school  better  than  home.  I  don't  like  home.  There's  too  many 
flowers." 

There  is  no  law  violated  by  the  employment  of  those  children. 
They  are  in  school  when  they  ought  to  be  in  school.  The  build- 
ing has  been  inspected  by  the  tenement  department  and  the 
factory  department  and  found  satisfactory,  and  there  is  nothing 
which  legally  can  be  done  to  prevent  the  work  of  five-,  seven-, 
nine-  or  eleven-year-old  children. 

Similar  stories  might  be  multiplied,  but  this  may  serve  as  a 
picture  of  present  conditions.  Within  a  month  forty-two  families 
of  homeworkers  selected  at  random  have  been  visited,  and  in 
them  fifty-nine  children  under  fourteen  years  of  age  were  found 
at  work.  The  importance  of  these  few  cases  is  more  fully  real- 
ized when  read  in  the  bulletin  of  the  New  York  State  De- 
partment of  Labor  in  September,  1909,  that  in  New  York  City  on 
June  30th  of  this  year  there  were  11,162  licensed  tenements. 
The  corresponding  number  for  1908  was  9,805.  In  1906  there 
were  5,261.  We  do  not  know  how  many  families  were  living  in 
those  tenements,  nor  how  many  children  were  at  work  at  home, 
but  the  number  of  licensed  houses  has  been  increasing  at  the  rate 
of  two  thousand  a  year.  This  does  not  necessarily  mean  that 
the  homework  system  has  been  spreading.  It  does  mean,  how- 
ever, that  the  labor  department  is  discovering  hundreds  of  tene- 
ments each  year  in  which  home  manufacture  is  carried  on. 
Whatever  may  be  said  of  New  York's  law  regulating  man- 
ufactures in  tenements,  it  does  not  appear  that  it  has  had  the 
effect  of  decreasing  the  amount  of  work  given  out  to  be  done  in 
homes.    It  is  characteristic  of  the  system  that  its  evils  are  its  life, 


ii8  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

that  the  unrestricted  competition  of  unskilled  workers,  the  un- 
regulated hours  of  work,  and  the  employment  of  children  are 
the  things  which  make  it  profitable  for  the  manufacturer.  It 
seems  obvious  that  to  eradicate  these  evils  we  must  find  some 
way  of  checking  and  in  time  eliminating  the  system  from  which 
they  are  inseparable. 

The  development  of  the  New  York  law  is  an  illustration  of 
an  attempt  to  "regulate"  a  system  which  thrives  on  failures  to 
regulate  it.  When  the  law  prohibiting  the  making  of  cigars  in 
tenements  was  declared  unconstitutional  in  1885  the  legislature 
made  no  further  attempt  to  deal  with  this  subject  until  1892,  when 
the  law  passed  providing  for  the  licensing  of  apartments  in 
which  certain  articles  were  manufactured.  From  time  to  time 
the  law  has  been  amended,  but  its  essential  provision,  the  license, 
remains  unchanged.  More  than  forty  separate  articles  are 
named,  and  none  of  these  may  be  manufactured  in  any  living 
rooms  unless  the  house  has  been  licensed  by  the  New  York  State 
Department  of  Labor.  A  license  is  issued  when  the  department 
has  ascertained  that  there  are  no  orders  outstanding  against  the 
property  either  in  the  tenement-house*  department  or  the  board 
of  health,  and  when  a  factory  inspector  has  reported  that  sanitary 
conditions  are  satisfactory.  The  manufacturer,  the  owner  of  the 
house,  and  the  worker  are  all  held  responsible  if  any  of  the 
articles  named  in  the  law  are  made  in  unlicensed  houses.  In 
brief,  the  law  is  designed  merely  to  establish  a  certain  standard 
of  sanitation  in  home  workrooms. 

The  best  test  of  its  effectiveness  is  the  actual  present  condi- 
tion and  extent  of  tenement  manufacturers  in  New  York.  From 
three  investigations  among  several  which  have  been  made,  the 
outlines  of  these  conditions  may  be  traced.  In  1902  the  De- 
partment of  Labor  investigated  more  than  1,000  home  workers 
in  New  York  City.  In  1907  the  same  department  made  a  special 
inquiry. into  the  employment  of  children  in  licensed  tenements 
on  three  or  four  streets.  At  the  same  time  an  investigation  was 
being  carried  on  by  the  Child  Labor  committees,  national  and 
city,  the  Consumers'  Leagues,  national  and  city,  and  the  College 
Settlements  Association.  In  these  two  last  studies  made  in  a 
very  limited  territory  in  a  brief  period  of  time,  558  children  who 


CHILD   LABOR  119 

could  not  legally  have  worked  in  a  factory  in  New  York  State 
were  found  working  at  home.  The  youngest  was  three  years  old. 
More  than  half  were  less  than  eleven  years.  Forty  children  were 
out  of  school  in  violation  of  the  compulsory  education  law. 
Twenty-three  were  too  young  to  be  protected  by  its  provisions. 
Nearly  half  the  houses  in  which  these  children  were  at  work  had 
not  been  licensed.  Fifty  cents  a  day  was  a  common  wage  re- 
presenting the  earnings  of  at  least  two  workers. 

More  than  a  dozen  different  articles  found  in  the  tenements 
were  not  named  in  the  law,  so  that  the  houses  in  which  they  were 
manufactured  did  not  come  under  the  wording  of  any  labor 
legislation.  For  example,  children  were  found  sewing  a  fine 
quality  of  kid  glove  in  a  house  which  the  department  of  labor 
had  refused  to  license.  Because  gloves  were  not  named  in  the 
law  this  work  was  permissible. 

The  great  majority  of  the  home  workers  are  Italians.  A  few 
are  Germans  or  Russian  Jews,  and  a  few  are  native  born.  Only 
a  very  small  proportion  are  native  born  of  native  parents.  One 
little  Italian  girl  was  asked  whether  she  had  ever  made  flowers 
in  Italy.  She  said  "No"  with  great  emphasis,  and  added,  "When 
we  were  in  Italy  we  used  to  think  it  was  funny  that  people 
made  flowers  in  New  York.     In  Italy  we  have  them  natural." 

It  is  not  merely  the  most  recent  arrivals  among  the  immi- 
grants who  are  at  work  in  their  homes.  In  the  official  investiga- 
tion of  1902  only  eleven  of  705  licensees  were  recorded  as  having 
been  in  this  country  less  than  one  year.  More  than  one-half  had 
been  here  longer  than  five  years. 

In  the  investigation  of  the  work  of  children  no  family  was 
found  in  which  the  income  from  homework  was  sufficient  for 
support.  In  the  official  study  of  1902  it  was  found  that  the  av- 
erage earnings  of  homeworkers*  families  in  the  clothing  trade 
were  $3.67.  Artificial  flower  makers  earned  $2.07  a  week.  A 
worker,  who  reported  recently  that  the  price  for  making  a  flower 
had  been  reduced  from  five  cents  a  gross  to  two  cents  a  gross, 
said,  "You  see,  some  women  are  willing  to  do  it  for  that,  and  the 
rest  must  do  it  if  they  want  the  work.  Two  women  came  to  our 
factory  the  other  day  and  offered  to  work  at  home  a  week  for 
nothing  if  the  boss  would  give  them  the  work." 


120  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

When  we  sum  up  this  sketch  of  the  conditions  of  homework 
and  place  beside  it  an  outline  of  the  law,  the  two  do  not  balance. 
On  the  one  side  are  the  unrestricted  hours  of  work  for  women, 
the  employment  of  children,  and  a  scale  of  wages  tending  to 
slide  downward.  On  the  other  side  are  elaborate  provisions  for 
regulating  the  sanitary  conditions  of  home  workrooms.  We 
seem  to  have  taken  no  thought  of  the  industrial  problem  in- 
volved, namely,  to  establish  a  plane  of  competition  which  can- 
not be  lowered  by  the  exigencies  or  the  needs  of  individual 
workers.  We  have  left  the  manufacturer  singularly  free.  Every 
other  effective  factory  law  lays  the  responsibility  on  his  shoul- 
ders. In  our  regulation  of  homework  in  New  York  all  that  we 
do  is  to  give  him  a  list  of  addresses,  and  say,  "We  have  inspected 
these  tenements  and  found  them  sanitary.  You  may  give  out 
work  to  families  living  in  them.  You  must  not  send  work  into 
any  other  houses." 

To  point  out  possible  methods  of  safeguarding  the  workers' 
freedom  and  increasing  the  manufacturers'  responsibility  in  the 
homework  system  is  beyond  the  scope  of  this  address  and  be- 
longs rather  to  the  discussion  which  will  follow.  It  may  be  said, 
however,  that  the  evils  characteristic  of  home  industries  are  but 
one  manifestation  of  a  condition  prevailing  in  other  systems  of 
industry,  whereby  the  worker  is  deprived  of  real  freedom  to  con- 
tract. Advantage  is  taken  of  his  needs  to  force  him  to  accept 
the  lowest  possible  wage.  The  extreme  condition  found  to  so 
large  an  extent  on  Manhattan  Island  is  really  but  one  striking 
example  of  a  similar  industrial  servitude  in  factories  as  well  as 
in  homes  throughout  the  country.  To  prevent  such  servitude  is 
the  child  labor  problem  in  home  industries. 

Annals   of   the   American   Academy.   35:   Sup.    152-4. 
March,  igio. 

Child  Labor  in  Canneries.   Pauline  Goldmark. 

Child  labor  which  has  no  legal  regulation  is  the  subject  of 
this  meeting.  The  hosts  of  children  employed  in  agriculture  are 
included  under  this  head,  and  one  great  industry  which  stands  on 
the  borderline  between  factory  law  and  agriculture,  namely  the 


CHILD   LABOR  121 

canning  industry,  employing  thousands  of  children  unrestricted  by 
any  sort  of  legal  regulation.  It  has  had  this  freedom  on  account 
of  its  supposedly  agricultural  character. 

In  New  York  State,  in  fact,  an  opinion  of  the  attorney  general 
specifically  exempts  work  in  the  cannery  sheds  from  the  pro- 
tection of  the  labor  law,  on  the  ground  that  such  work  is  not 
injurious.  It  is  true  that  most  of  the  occupations  are  carried 
on  in  the  open  air.  The  canners  provide  sheds  where  the  prep- 
aration and  cleaning  of  fruit  and  vegetables  is  done,  such  proc- 
esses as  hulling  strawberries,  stemming  cherries  and  plums^ 
stringing  beans,  cleaning  tomatoes  and  apples,  and  husking  corn. 
But  here  the  resemblance  to  agriculture  stops,  for  in  speeding, 
intensity  of  application  and  long  hours,  cannery  work  is  as 
exhausting  as  any  other  form  of  factory  work. 

Canneries  depend  for  their  labor  almost  exclusively  on  women 
and  children.  On  account  of  the  perishability  of  their  product 
and  even  more  on  account  of  the  unorganized  and  irregulated 
method  of  securing  their  raw  materials,  these  establishments 
work  overtime,  to  a  degree  almost  unprecedented  in  any  other 
industry.  It  is  not  at  all  unusual  for  young  girls  and  women  to 
work  for  eighty  or  ninety  hours  a  week.  They  have  been 
known  to  work  for  eighteen  hours  of  the  twenty-four  in  certain 
canneries  in  New  York  State. 

In  order  to  secure  a  sufficiently  large  labor  supply  when  the 
country  towns  do  not  furnish  enough  workers,  the  canneries 
are  calling  more  and  more  upon  the  cities.  In  New  York  State 
as  well  as  in  New  Jersey,  Delaware  and  Maryland,  there  is  a 
yearly  exodus  from  the  large  cities  of  Italian  and  Polish  families 
who  seek  this  work  for  the  summer  months.  Young  and  old 
alike  work  in  the  sheds.  Mothers  take  their  nursing  children 
with  them,  and  children  from  four  years  up  have  been  found 
stringing  beans.  This  is  the  crop  that  calls  for  most  hand-work, 
as  no  machine  has  yet  been  invented  that  will  string  beans. 
Therefore,  at  the  height  of  the  bean  season  which  often  lasts 
for  six  weeks,  the  canners  get  their  workers  out  at  4  A.  M.  and 
may  keep  them  employed  until  midnight.  The  pay  varies  from 
one  to  one-and-one-half  cents  a  pound.  Under  these  conditions 
the  immigrants  are  stimulated  to  work  as  lojig  as  they  can  stay 


122  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

awake,  taking  no  time  to  attend  to  household  matters  or  to  the 
needs  of  their  children. 

Moreover,  the  living  quarters  provided  by  the  canners  are  of- 
ten shamefully  over-crowded.  Fifty  people,  including  men, 
women  and  children,  may  be  housed  in  an  old  barn ;  or  shacks 
may  be  erected  of  the  poorest  construction,  allowing  but  one 
small  room  for  a  whole  family  of  adults  and  children.  Often 
several  hundred  persons  live  together  in  the  utmost  squalor 
lacking  all  the  decencies  of  life,  under  unhygienic  conditions 
that  would  not  be  tolerated  in  any  city.  Thus,  the  much-talked- 
of  benefits  of  country  life  for  city  workers  during  the  summer 
months  are  nowhere  apparent. 

The  children  are  pressed  into  the  work,  especially  during  the 
bean  season,  in  order  to  add  to  the  family  income.  Their  little 
fingers  are  particularly  dexterous  in  bean  stringing.  They  sit 
close  to  mother  or  sister,  working  for  hours  at  intense  speed. 
They  may  be  released  to  take  a  box  of  beans  to  the  weigher, 
carrying  for  several  hundred  feet  weights  far  too  heavy  for  their 
tender  years.  At  night  it  is  a  common  sight  to  see  a  whole  family 
of  childi'en  fall  asleep  over  their  work,  while  their  parents 
stolidly  keep  on  as  long  as  the  supply  of  beans  holds  out. 
Lack  of  sleep,  exposure  to  inclement  weather,  and  insufficient 
food  add  to  these  deplorable  conditions. 

The  deprivation  of  schooling  is  another  serious  evil.  These 
families  frequently  do  not  return  to  their  winter  homes  until 
long  after  the  beginning  of  the  school  year,  in  some  cases  con- 
tinuing to  work  at  late  crops  until  Christmas.  The  younger 
children  may  be  unemployed  for  months  and  rove  around  the 
country-side,  neglected  by  their  parents  and  uncared  for  by 
health  or  school  officers.  The  local  schools  assume  no  re- 
sponsibility for  them,  and  when  they  return  to  the  city  they  have 
fallen  far  behind  their  regular  classes.  In  a  special  inquiry  in 
the  schools  of  Buffalo,  N.  Y.,  the  teachers  gave  distressing 
evidence  as  to  the  backwardness  of  the  cannery  children.  They 
do  not  catch  up  with  their  classes  before  they  are  again  carried 
off  to  the  canneries  early  in  June,  becoming  a  burden  to  the 
public  school  and  losing  all  the  benefit  of  consecutive  school 
life.     In  one   school  it  was   shown   that  seventy-seven  children 


CHILD   LABOR  123 

under  fourteen  years  of  age  were  absent  at  the  beginning  of  the 
fall  term  for  this  reason.  The  New  York  State  compulsory 
education  law  requires  ten  months*  attendance,  yet  thousands 
of  these  cannery  children,  who  particularly  need  the  assimilating 
influence  of  our  public  schools,  are  habitual  truants.  No  local 
or  state  official  concerns  himself  with  these  little  strangers,  who, 
though  born  in  America,  are  likely  to  grow  up  as  foreign  as 
their  immigrant  parents.  Is  it  not  of  immediate  concern  that  these 
young  boys  and  girls,  future  citizens  of  our  country,  should 
have  proper  supervision?  The  problem  is  presumably  the  same 
in  all  the  states  where  canneries  are  found.  It  is  an  industry 
which  is  growing  by  leaps  and  bounds,  dependent  to  a  large 
degree  upon  the  hordes  of  immigrant  workers. 

No  exact  estimate  has  ever  been  made  of  the  number  of 
children  employed.  In  one  New  York  State  cannery  alone  300 
children  under  fourteen  years  of  age  were  found  at  work  in  Au- 
gust, 1909.  Surely  enough  is  known  of  the  extraordinary  extent 
of  this  form  of  child  labor  and  the  peculiar  undesirable  living 
conditions  at  many  canneries,  to  call  for  further  investigation 
and  immediate  legal  restriction  of  the  one  great  employing  in- 
dustry  that   still    stands   outside   of  the   factory   law. 

Charities  and  the   Commons.   19:   1405-20.  January   18,   1908. 

Child  Labor  in  New  York  City  Tenements.  Mary  Van  Kleeck. 

The  following  brief  report  gives  the  results  of  a  joint  investiga- 
tion made  during  the  months  from  October,  1906,  to  April,  1907, 
into  the  labor  of  children  in  manufacture  in  tenement  houses  in 
New  York  city.  The  National  Consumers'  League  and  the  Con- 
sumers' League  of  New  York  City,  the  National  and  New  York 
Child  Labor  Committees,  and  the  College  Settlements  Association 
co-operated  in  the  undertaking. 

In  the  most  thickly  populated  districts  of  New  York  city, 
especially  south  of  Fourteenth  street,  little  children  are  often 
seen  on  the  streets  carrying  large  bundles  of  unfinished  garments, 
or  boxes  containing  materials  for  making  artificial  flowers. 
This  work  is  given  out  by  manufacturers  or  contractors  to  be 
finished  in  tenement  homes,  where  the  labor  of  children  of  any 
age  may  be  utilized.  For  the  laws  of  New  York  state,  prohib- 
iting the  employment  of  children  under  fourteen  years  of  age 


124  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

in  factories,  stores,  or  other  specified  work-places,  have  never 
been  extended  to  home  workrooms.  In  this  fact  is  presented 
a  child  labor  problem, — as  yet  scarcely  touched, — namely: 
How  to  prevent  employment  of  young  children  in  home  work 
in  manufacture? 

So  difficult  has  been  the  problem  of  regulating  by  law  the 
conditions  of  employment  in  home  workrooms,  the  advance  in 
measures  to  protect  children  against  premature  toil  in  factories 
has  had  no  parallel  in  provisions  designed  to  regulate  man- 
ufacture in  tenement  homes.  Between  these  two  systems  of 
manufacture, — one  carried  on  in  factories  and  the  other  in  the 
homes  of  the  workers, — there  are,  therefore,  some  striking 
contrasts  in  the  law.  No  maker  of  artificial  flowers  can  employ 
in  his  factory  any  child  under  fourteen  years  of  age,  but  he  may 
give  out  work  to  an  Italian  family,  in  whose  tenement  rooms 
flowers  are  made  by  six  children,  aged  two  and  one-half,  five, 
eight,  ten,  fourteen  and  sixteen  years.  In  another  family  Angelo, 
aged  fourteen  years,  cannot  work  legally  in  a  factory  until  he 
reaches  a  higher  grade  in  school,  nor  can  he  work  at  home 
during  hours  when  school  is  in  session,  but  his  little  sister 
Maria,  aged  three  years,  because  she  is  not  old  enough  to  go  to 
school  and  because  the  home  work  law  contains  no  prohibition 
of  child  labor,  may  help  her  mother  pull  bastings  and  sew  on 
buttons.  A  public  school  teacher  notices  that  Eva  and  Mary 
R.,  aged  eleven  and  ten  years,  are  pale  and  under-nourished, 
but  although  the  compulsory  education  law  supports  her  in  re- 
quiring their  attendance  in  school  during  school  hours,  she  can- 
not prevent  their  making  flowers  at  home  from  three  o'clock 
until  nine  or  ten  at  night.  Many  good  citizens  would  demand 
the  prosecution  of  a  manufacturer  who  employed  in  his  factory 
Tony  aged  four  years,  Maria  aged  nine.  Rose  aged  ten,  Louisa 
aged  eleven,  and  Josephine  aged  thirteen  years.  For  such  an 
offence  the  employer  might  be  fined  $ioo  for  each  child  under 
fourteen  years  of  age  found  at  work  in  his  factory.  Yet  public 
opinion  has  not  raised  an  effective  protest  against  the  same  em- 
ployer when  he  turns  these  children's  home  into  a  branch  of  his 
factory  and  gives  them  work  in  which  even  the  smallest  child  in 
the  family  joins  through  long  hours  under  a  necessity  as  imperi- 


CHILD    LABOR  125 

oils  in  its  demand  for  the  constant  work  and  attention   of  the 
child   as   would   be   the   commands   of   a    foreman    in   a    factory. 

In  brief,  the  law  which  regulates  home  work  manufacture 
in  New  York  city,  contains  no  provisions  to  'prevent  the  em- 
ployment of  children  nor  to  restrict  the  working  hours  of  minors 
or  women.  It  provides  merely  that  work  on  certain  specified 
articles  (forty-one  in  number)  given  out  by  manufacturers  or 
contractors,  may  not  be  carried  on  in  a  tenement  living  room, 
unless,  the  owner  of  the  house  has  first  obtained  a  license  from 
the  New  York  State  Department  of  Labor.  Any  articles  not 
named  in  the  law  may  legally  be  manufactured  in  unlicensed 
houses. 

That  the  law  in  New  York  state  does  not  protect  more  ef- 
fectively these  child  workers  in  tenement  homes,  is  due  not 
to  a  lack  of  opposition  to  premature  employment  of  children, 
but  to  the  impossibility  of  dealing  with  the  problem  merely  as 
a  child  labor  question  apart  from  deep-rooted  evils  essential  to 
the  "sweating  system,"  of  which  home  work  is  an  important  part. 
The  evils  of  the  system, — intense  competition  among  unskilled 
workers  in  a  crowded  district,  low  wages,  unrestricted  hours  of 
work,  irregularity  of  employment,  and  utilization  of  child 
labor, — are  the  very  conditions  which  make  the  system  possible 
and  profitable  to  the  employer.  Any  effective  attempt  to  improve 
conditions  must  therefore  be  an  attack  upon  the  sweating  system. 
The  manufacturer  or  contractor,  whose  employes  work  in  their 
home,  escapes  responsibility  entailed  by  the  presence  of  workers 
in  his  factory.  He  saves  costs  of  rent,  heat  and  light ;  avoids  the 
necessity  of  keeping  the  force  together  and  giving  them  regular 
employment  when  work  is  slack.  And  by  turning  the  workers' 
homes  into  branches  of  the  factory,  he  escapes  in  them  the  neces- 
sity of  observing  the  factory  laws.  Instead  of  the  manifold  restric- 
tions which  apply  to  employes  within  the  factory,  he  is  here 
responsible  only  for  keeping  a  list  of  his  home  workers  and  he 
may  not  send  any  goods,  which  are  named  in  the  home  work 
law  into  a  tenement  which  has  not  been  licensed. 
Work  In  Licensed  Houses 

To  a  casual  visitor,  the  brightest  side  of  home  work  would 
appear    in    the    tenements    on    Sullivan,    Thompson,    Macdougal,  • 


126  ^  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

Houston,  and  neighboring  streets,  among  makers  of  artificial 
flowers.  ;Many  houses  are  "new  law"  tenements,  in  which  pro- 
vision has  been  made  for  light  and  air.  In  many  of  them  there  is 
full  compliance  'with  the  provisions  of  the  home  work  law. 
It  is  therefore  a  neighborhood  which  illustrates  well  the  limita- 
tions of  the  licensing  system. 

So  general  is  the  custom  of  home  work  in  this  district  that  as 
one  mounts  the  stairs  in  any  one  of  these  houses  one  finds  on 
every  floor,  and  in  almost  every  apartment,  families  of  flower- 
makers. 

On  the  top  floor  of  a  licensed  house  on  Sullivan  street  two 
children,  Angelina  aged  eleven  years,  and  Katharine  aged  eight 
years,  were  at  work  helping  an  older  sister  make  roses  at  eight 
cents  a  gross.  The  apartment  was  clean  and  light  and  the 
family  prosperous,  with  an  income  of  at  least  $20  a  week  from 
sources  other  than  home  work, — the  wages  of  the  father  and 
two  brothers.  The  older  sister,  aged  eighteen  years,  worked  at 
home  rather  than  in  a  factory,  so  that  she  might  help  her  mother 
with  housework.  So  small  was  the  pay  for  flowers  that  she 
forced  her  two  younger  sisters  to  work  steadily  after  school 
hours  until  eight  o'clock  at  night,  in  order  that  together  they 
might  earn  eighty  cents  a  day,  the  wages  paid  for  making, 
counting  and  bunching  1,440  small  roses.  At  the  neighboring 
school  it  was  found  that  both  Angelina  and  Katharine  attend- 
ed regularly,  but  that  their  marks  in  "proficiency"  were  lower 
than  their  marks  in  "effort  and  deportment."  Of  Katharine,  the 
younger,  the  teacher  said,  "The  child  is  very  sleepy  during 
school  hours."  Yet  the  children  were  obeying  the  compulsory 
education  law,  and  their  work  was  done  in  a  clean  house  where 
the  required  framed  license  hung  in  the  hallway.  No  statute 
was  therefore  violated  by  their  employment. 

In  the  same  house  were  several  other  children  who  made 
roses  or  violets  or  other  flowers,  of  cheap  grade:  John  B.  aged 
thirteen  years ;  Jennie  V.  aged  thirteen ;  Jasmine  aged  fourteen, 
and  James  D.  aged  six,  who  lived  in  the  rear  apartment  of  the 
first  floor,  where  high  buildings  nearby  shut  out  the  light  so  that 
it  is  necessary  to  keep  gas  burning  in  the  rooms  where  work  is 
done.    Also  Celia  aged  fourteen  years,  Julia  aged  ten,  and  Josie 


CHILD   LABOR  127 

aged  six,  who  lived  in  the  front  apartment  on  the  first  floor, 
were  helping  their  mother  make  violets  at  three  and  one-half 
cents  a  gross.  They  worked  until  9  P.  M.  to  finish  between  1440 
and  1700  flowers  in  a  day,  for  which  they  were  paid  thirty-five 
or  forty  cents. 

In  no  case  was  the  manufacturer  violating  the  labor  law  in 
employing  these  children.  Not  only  were  these  cases  of  child 
labor  quite  permissible  under  the  present  attempted  legal  regula- 
tion of  home  work,  but  even  an  increased  stringency  in  those 
sanitary  requirements  which  are  the  essential  feature  of  the 
present  law  would  probably  not  affect  in  any  way  this  house  or 
the  work  of  these  children,  since  sanitary  conditions  were  satis- 
factory. 

The  licensing  system  does  not  re-enforce  the  compulsory 
education  law.  If  Sarah  M.,  an  Italian  child  aged  ten  years  had 
not  lived  in  a  licensed  tenement  it  would  not  have  been  so  difficult 
for  the  school  authorities  to  compel  her  parents  to  send  her  to 
school.  After  sixty  days'  absence  and  four  fruitless  visits  from  a 
truant  officer  she  was  found  still  working  at  home,  sewing  but- 
tons on  corduroy  trousers.  The  framed  certificate  in  the  hall 
showed  that  the  house  was  licensed,  and  for  this  reason  it  was 
not  possible  to  re-enforce  the  compulsory  education  law  by  pre- 
venting the  child's  employment  at  home.  The  family  was  very 
poor,  there  were  four  children  younger  than  Sarah,  and  the 
father,  an  unskilled  day  laborer,  was  out  of  work.  The  possibiHty 
of  working  at  home,  without  any  interference  by  the  inspectors  of 
the  Labor  Department,  placed  a  premium  upon  the  child's  truancy. 
The  aid  of  a  relief  society  was  finally  secured  on  the  ground 
that  a  family  who  were  obliged  to  depend  upon  the  work  of  a 
child  of  ten  years,  were  evidently  not  self-supporting  and  should 
be  aided  on  condition  that  the  child  be  sent  to  school  as  the  law 
requires.  But  even  after  this,  the  society  reported  that  it  would 
be  necessary  to  watch  the  family.  For  it  was  the  busy  season  in 
the  clothing  trade,  the  time  when  every  member  of  the  home- 
workers'  households  is  pressed  into  service  to  fill  the  contract- 
ors' orders. 


128  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Work  Where  There  Is  Disease 

Although  the  present  provisions  of  the  home  work  law  are 
intended  to  prevent  manufacture  in  apartments  where  there  is 
disease,  by  requiring  immediate  action  by  the  State  Department 
of  Labor  and  the  city  Department  of  Health,  the  licensing  system 
does  not  guard  sufficiently  against  work  where  disease  exists. 
After  a  house  has  been  properly  licensed,  some  member  of  a 
family  of  workers  may  be  afflicted  with  tuberculosis,  and  the  fact 
may  not  be  reported  either  to  the  Board  of  Health  or  the  Depart- 
ment of  Labor.  To  guard  against  the  danger  of  manufacturing 
articles  under  such  conditions,  would  require  constant  watching 
of  the  shifting  population  of  a  New  York  city  tenement.  It  is 
hardly  to  be  expected  that  among  the  great  crowds  of  possible 
home  workers  peopling  a  city  block,  each  family  can  be  watched 
by  the  over-burdened  Labor  Department  upon  which  devolves, 
besides  the  work  of  factory  inspection,  the  task  of  examining 
regularly  more  than  5.000  licensed  tenements  in  Greater  New 
York,  and  of  detecting  any  work  carried  on  illegally  among  the 
far  greater  number  of  unlicensed  houses. 

The  possibility  of  homework  in  an  apartment  where  there  is 
disease,  and  the  employment  of  children  under  these  unhealthy 
conditions,  is  illustrated  by  an  Italian  family  referred  to  a  relief 
society  in  the  autumn  of  1906.  The  house  had  been  licensed  in 
the  preceding  year,  when  the  sanitary  conditions  presumably 
were  satisfactory  to  the  Department  of  Health,  the  Tenement 
House  Department,  and  the  Department  of  Labor,  and  there 
must  have  been  no  evidence  of  disease  among  the  tenants.  Yet  in 
1906  it  was  found  that  for  weeks  a  family  living  in  the  house  had 
been  finishing  clothing  in  the  room  where  the  oldest  daughter, 
Vincenza.  aged  sixteen  years,  lay  dying  of  tuberculosis. 

A  visitor  of  the  relief  society  found  Rosina  aged  thirteen 
years,  helping  her  mother  and  father  in  the  work  of  finishing 
trousers.  Since  the  arrival  of  the  family  in  the  United  States 
seven  years  before,  neither  Rosina  nor  Vincenza  had  attended 
school,  and  neither  could  read  or  write.  With  the  father  ill  of 
tuberculosis.  Vincenza  no  longer  able  to  work,  and  four  younger 
children,  aged  eleven,  seven,  five  and  two  years,  to  be  cared  for, 
Rosina,  who  had  helped  to  support  the  family  since  she  was  six 


CHILD   LABOR  129 

years  old,  was  now  the  chief  w^age  earner.  Her  brother,  Giuseppe, 
aged  eleven  years  helped  in  the  sewing  after  school  hours.  But 
at  the  price  of  four  cents  a  pair,  for  "felling"  seams,  finishing 
linings,  and  sewing  buttons  on  trousers,  all  the  workers  in  the 
family, — father,  mother  and  two  children,  by  united  effort, 
could  not  earn  more  than  four  or  five  dollars  a  week. 

When  the  relief  society  aided  the  family,  Vincenza  was  sent 
to  a  hospital,  and  Rosina  for  the  first  time  in  her  life  began  to 
go  to  school.  But  she  continued  to  sew  at  home  after  school 
hours.  A  later  entry  in  the  society's  records  reports  that  "Rosina 
and  Giuseppe  were  busy  at  work  finishing.  Rosina  said  that  she 
went  to  school  regularly  all  day  sessions,  and  that  she  and  her 
brother  helped  at  finishing  after  school." 

All  that  the  law  could  do  for  Rosina  was  to  add  school  work 
to  the  ceaseless  toil  in  which  she  had  spent  her  days  since  early 
childhood.  In  her  work  at  home  from  the  time  she  was  six  years 
old  for  a  manufacturer  of  clothing  no  provision  of  the  labor 
law  was  violated.  After  her  eighth  birthday,  her  work  at  home, 
in  that  it  prevented  her  attending  school,  caused  a  violation  of 
the  compulsory  education  law.  But  the  work  in  itself,  so  long  as 
the  family  lived  in  a  licensed  tenement,  was  never  at  any  time 
illegal  until  Vincenza  developed  tuberculosis.  Nor  was  this  and 
the  danger  to  the  public  health  from  the  presence  of  a  communi- 
cable disease  in  the  home  workroom  prevented  by  the  Depart- 
ment of  Labor  or  the  Board  of  Health. 

Work  in  Unlicensed  Houses 
Since  it  is  the  theory  of  the  licen.sing  system  that  no  home 
work  is  to  be  permitted  in  any  tenement  until  the  Department  of 
Labor  is  convinced  that  the  premises  are  sanitary,  it  is  clear  that 
the  existence  of  work  in  unlicensed  tenements  is  evidence  of 
failure  in  the  law's  enforcement.  The  day  after  Christmas,  1906, 
three  child  workers,  Vito  aged  thirteen  years,  Maggie  aged 
eleven,  and  Billy  aged  nine,  were  visited  in  a  tenement  on  James 
street.  Vito  had  just  brought  from  a  nearby  shop  ten  dozen  pairs 
of  boys'  trousers  to  be  finished  for  the  wage  of  four  cents  a 
dozen.  The  father,  a  plasterer,  who  can  earn  $1.75  a  day,  was 
idle,  depending  for  a  while  on  the  earnings  of  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren, whose  wages  were  higher  during  holidays  than  when  school 


130  .      SELECTED   ARTICLES 

attendance  interrupted  their  work.  The  family,  consisting  of 
father,  mother  and  six  children,  of  whom  the  youngest  were  aged 
six  years,  three  and  one,  lived  in  two  rooms  for  which  they  paid 
$11  a  month.  Home  work  was  a  regular  means  of.  supplementing 
the  father's  irregular  earnings,  and  it  was  the  habit  of  the  family 
to  take  work  as  often  as  possible  from  the  contractor,  whose  shop 
was  within  a  block  of  their  home.  Yet  the  house  in  which  they 
lived  had  never  been  licensed  by  the  Department  of  Labor,  and 
landlord,  contractor,  and  worker  were  all  breaking  the  labor  law. 
That  any  possibility  of  prosecution  was  remote  from  the  minds 
of  the  workers  was  indicated  by  the  fact  that  although  the  visit- 
ors were  strangers,  the  family  made  no  attempt  to  cjonceal  the 
work. 

One  other  phase  of  home  work  needs  illustration :  namely,  the 
kinds  of  manufacture  which  are  legal  even  though  carried  on  in 
unlicensed  houses. 

In  a  tenement  which  the  Department  of  Labor  had  refused 
to  license,  two  Italian  boys,  Mario  aged  twelve  years,  and  Louis 
aged  nine,  were  found  sewing  by  hand  the  small  tapes  under  the 
buttons  and  buttonholes  of  fine  kid  gloves.  The  mother  was  a 
widow  with  four  children,  aged  fourteen,  twelve,  nine  and  five 
years.  They  lived  in  one  small  room,  for  which  they  paid  a  rent 
of  $7.00.  Their  combined  earnings  from  home  work  were  not 
more  than  sixty  cents  a  day,  and  they  were  aided  necessarily  by  a 
relief  society.  Since  the  Department  of  Labor  had  found  the 
house  unworthy  of  a  license,  the  tenants  could  not  legally  make 
flowers  or  finish  clothing,  or  produce  thirty-nine  other  articles 
specified  in  the  statute ;  but  because  gloves  are  not  named  in  the 
home  work  law  their  manufacture  in  tenement  homes  is  neither 
prevented  nor  regulated. 

Excessive  Working  Hours 

The  results  of  these  investigations  indicate  the  failure  of  the 
licensing  system  in  several  important  directions. 

That  the  work  of  children  aged  five  years  and.  less  existed 
legally  in  tenement  homes  during  the  year  when  the  Department 
of  Labor  was  making  an  exceptional  record  in  the  enforcement 
of  child  labor  laws  in  factories,  is  an  indication  of  the  failure  of 
the  licensing  system  to  protect  child  workers. 


CHILD   LABOR  131 

Nor  does  our  present  attempt  to  regulate  the  conditions  of 
home  manufacture  contain  any  provisions  to  protect  women  and 
young  girls  from  working  twelve  to  fourteen  hours  in  a  day. 
The  inadequate  pay  received  for  home  work  creates  an  imperative 
necessity  for  long  and  exhausting  hours  of  labor,  and  the  law 
does  not  help  to  prevent  these  conditions.  Notes  like  the  follow- 
ing are  scattered  through  the  records  of  families  who  work  in 
their  homes : — 

Finishing  nine  overcoats  at  six  cents  a  coat,  working  until 
11  p.    m. 

Finishing  eight  or  nine  pairs  of  trousers  at  eight  and  one-half 
cents  a  pair,  working  as  steadily  as  possible  from  eight  a.  m.  to 
ten  p.  m.  Child  works  after  school.  Visitor  found  him  at  work  at 
9:30  p.  m. 

Making  nine  gross  flowers  (five  pieces  in  each  flower)  at  eight 
cents  a  gross. 

Making  one  gross  garters,  hand  and  machine  work,  at  fifty 
cents  per  gross.  Mother  works  as  steadily  as  possible  from  seven 
a.   m.   until  ten  p.   m. 

In  many  cases  girls  employed  during  the  day  in  a  factory  are 
asked  to  take  work  to  be  finished  at  home  in  the  evenings,  thus 
enabling  the  employer  to  take  advantage  of  long  hours  of  work 
without  risk  of  prosecution,  to  which  he  would  be  liable  if  these 
young  girls  worked  overtime  in  the  factory.  This  form  of  over- 
time work  has  been  found  in  such  trades  as  millinery,  clothing, 
including  not  only  coats  and  trousers,  but  children's  white  lawn 
dresses  and  ladies'  gowns,  embroidery,  neckwear,  braids,  en- 
velopes, buttons  (to  be  sewed  on  cards),  paper  boxes,  nuts  (to 
be  shelled  and  packed),  and  artificial  flowers  and  feathers.  It  is 
an  evasion  of  the  law  likely  to  occur  in  any  trade  adapted  in  any 
of  its  processes  to  home  manufacture. 
Conclusions 

Approaching  the  problem  of  home  work  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  workers,  especially  the  little  children,  we  see  imme- 
diately that  the  central  difficulty  lies  in  the  fact  that  this  manu- 
facture is  carried  on  in  dwelling  places,  the  homes  of  the  work- 
ers, where  the  thorough  enforcement  even  of  sanitary  provisions 
would  require  an  army  of  special  inspectors.  Whereas  prohibi- 
tion of  child  labor  in  factories  is  readily  possible  simply  by  ex- 
cluding any  child  from  the  factory  building,  within  the  home  the 
separation  of  the  child  from  the  work  is  impossible,  and  the 
child's  employment  may  easily  be  concealed.     Because  our  legis- 


132  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

lation  has  been  directed  only  to  the  attempted  protection  of  the 
consumer  against  infection,  we  have  been  content  to  divide  re- 
sponsibility between  landlord,  manufacturer,  and  worker,  and 
proceed  along  the  lines  of  attempted  regulation.  But  when  the 
health  and  welfare  of  the  workers  is  considered,  the  problem  is 
more  complex.  Legislation  concerning  industries  carried  on  in 
dwelling  places  is  clearly  seen  to  constitute  a  problem  quite  dis- 
tinct from  legislation  regarding  conditions  within  the  factories. 

This  form  of  manufacture  profits  no  one  but  the  employer, 
to  whom  it  offers  an  escape  from  factory  responsibilities.  Instead 
of  organizing  a  regular  staff  of  workers,  he  utilizes  the  labor  of 
unskilled  foreign  born  workers  and  their  children.  He  locates 
his  shop  near  their  homes,  and  during  the  busy  season  finds  at 
his  very  doors,  a  sufficient  force  of  workers  willing  to  toil  all 
night  to  finish  a  hurry  order.  Next  week  the  "boss"  may  have 
no  work  to  give  them,  and  they  dare  not  refuse  the  chance  to 
earn  every  possible  penny  to-day. 

To  the  worker,  home  manufacture  means  unlimited  hours  of 
work,  the  employment  of  the  children,  and  the  turning  of  the 
already  crowded  living  rooms  into  a  branch  of  a  nearby  factory, 
for  an  employer  who  pays  less  than  a  living  wage. 

For  the  consumer,  home  work  involves  the  danger  of  infection 
from  goods  made  in  crowded  living  apartments. 

The  nature  of  "sweating"  is  described  in  the  Report  of  the 
New  York  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  1902  (p.  37).  The  report 
says 

The  evils  are  starvation  wages,  excessive  hours  of  labor,  child 
labor,  and  unsanitary  and  unwholesome  worltplaces.  The  cause  is 
intense  competition  among  employers  of  small  capital  and  among 
unskilled  laborers,  of  whom  there  is  excessive  supply,  unrelieved 
by  legislative  regulation  or  collective  action. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  there  are  strong  advocates  of  the 
prohibition  of  all  manufacture  in  dwelling  rooms, — ^a  course  of 
action  based  on  the  conviction  that  we  cannot  abolish  the  evils 
of  home  work  while  the  system  which  invariably  produces  them 
is  allowed  to   exist. 

Yet  if  the  time  be  not  ripe  for  such  a  policy,  conditions  de- 
mand now  a  strengthening  of  present  attempted  regulations. 
Undoubtedly  much  can  be  accomplished  by  using  with  unremit- 
tingly severity  the  Labor  Department's  power  to  refuse  licenses 


CHILD   LABOR  133 

or  revoke  them,  where  sanitary  conditions  fall  below  an  estab- 
lished standard.  By  raising  the  standard  of  sanitation  (as  is  sug- 
gested-^n  the  last  annual  report  of  the  commissioner  of  labor), 
the  manufacturer  would  be  forced  to  deal  with  workers  main- 
taining a  higher  standard  of  living,  and  unwilling  to  work  for 
so  low  a  wage.  In  the  same  way,  some  cases  of  child  labor,  now 
found  in  the  lowest  class  of  tenements  among  the  poorest  fam- 
ilies, might  be  eliminated.  Such  a  policy  would  require  large 
funds  for  a  sufficient  force  of  inspectors  to  put  a  stop  to  work 
in  unlicensed  houses,  and  to  inspect  regularly  all  licensed  tene- 
ments. To  secure  the  appropriation  of  such  funds  there  would 
be  needed  the  constant  force  of  an  educated  public  opinion. 
Finally,  such  an  expenditure  of  public  money  would  not  be 
justified  unless  the  enforcement  of  the  law  could  be  accompanied 
by  a  constant  study  of  conditions,  and  a  consecutive,  official  pub- 
lication of  facts,  which  would  prove  to  the  public  the  weakness 
or  the  effectiveness  of  its  policy. 

McClure.   20:  435-44.  February,   1903. 
Children  of  the  Coal  Shadow.    Francis  H.  Nichols. 

So  far  as  the  conditions  of  his  life  are  concerned,  it  makes  no 
difference  to  the  child  of  the  Coal  Shadow  whether  his  parents 
born  in  Anthracite  of  Irish  or  Welsh  parentage,  and  they  have 
are  Americans  or  foreigners.  If  they  are  Americans,  they  were 
known  no  world  but  the  coal  fields  all  their  lives.  If  foreignej*s, 
they  were  recruited  by  some  agent  of  the  operators  twenty  years 
ago  from  among  the  poorest  peasantry  of  Continental  Europe, 
and  emigrated  thence  directly  to  their  present  homes.  In  either 
event  the  child's  parents  are  uneducated,  their  mental  horizon 
is  in  everything  bounded  by  the  coal  heaps,  and  their  hope  is  the 
union. 

Every  child  of  the  coal  fields  who  to-day  is  ten  years  old  has 
lived  through  at  least  two  great  strikes.  During  these  periods  the 
indefinite  and  sullen  discontent  takes  a  concrete  and  militant 
form.  There  is  talk  by  idle  men  of  "the  right  of  labor"  and  the 
"wickedness  of  riches."  Deputies  armed  with  rifles  are  guarding 
the  company's  property.    A  detachment  of  militia  is  encamped  at 


134  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

the  end  of  the  street.  The  child's  mother,  whose  face  grows 
daily  paler  and  more  careworn,  goes  once  a  week  to  the  District 
Local  to  receive  a  dollar  or  two  of  relief  funds,  with  which  she 
buys  enough  food  to  keep  together  the  bodies  and  souls  of  her 
family.  The  child's  father  at  night  attends  secret  meetings  of 
the  union,  and  feels  highly  honored  when  the  district  organizer 
calls  to  whisper  to  him  the  password.  The  child  learns  that  the 
worst  crime  a  man  can  commit  is  to  be  a  "scab,"  and  that  his 
noblest  privilege  is  to  join  the  union. 

The  effects  of  the  strike  are  directly  felt  by  the  children  of 
the  miner  almost  as  much  as  by  the  miner  himself.  A  case  in 
point  during  the  strike  of  1902  was  the  prohibition  of  "coal  "pick- 
ing." 

While  the  mines  were  working,  the  miner  was  permitted  to 
buy  coal  at  the  colliery  at  a  moderate  price.  Upon  the  declara- 
tion of  the  strike,  this  privilege  was  denied  him.  The  miner's 
wife  naturally  turned  for  her  supply  to  the  mountain  of  culm  be- 
side which  she  lived.  The  children  of  the  villages  began  to  fill 
their  coal-scuttles  from  the  heaps,  that  were  the  accumulations 
of  years,  and  which  had  been  always  regarded  as  valueless  refuse. 
But  the  company  put  up  "No  trespass"  signs,  and  stationed 
deputies  to  see  that  not  a  pound  of  culm  was  removed.  Impelled 
by  their  need  for  fuel,  parties  of  children  were  sent  out  to  steal 
coal  on  more  distant  culm  heaps. 

Dangers  and  Hardships  of  the  Work 

The  coal  so  closely  resembles  slate  that  it  can  be  detected 
only  by  the  closest  scrutiny,  and  the  childish  faces  are  compelled 
to  bend  so  low  over  the  chutes  that  prematurely  round  shoulders 
and  narrow  chests  are  the  inevitable  result.  In  front  of  the 
chutes  is  an  open  space  reserved  for  the  "breaker  boss,"  who 
watches  the  boys  as  intently  as  they  watch  the  coal. 

The  boss  is  armed  with  a  stick,  with  which  he  occasionally 
raps  on  the  head  and  shoulders  a  boy  who  betrays  lack  of  zeal. 
The  breakers  are  supposed  to  be  heated  in  winter,  and  a  steam 
pipe  winds  up  the  wall ;  but  in  cold  weather  every  pound  of  steam 
is  needed  in  the  mines,  so  that  the  amount  of  heat  that  radiates 
from  the  steam  pipe  is  not  sufficient  to  be  taken  seriously  by  any 
of  the  breakers'  toilers.     From  November  until  May  a  breaker 


CHILD   LABOR  135 

boy  always  wears  a  cap  and  tippet,  and  overcoat  if  he  possesses 
one,  but  because  he  has  to  rely  largely  upon  the  sense  of  touch, 
he  cannot  cover  his  finger-tips  with  mittens  or  gloves ;  from  the 
chafing  of  the  coal  his  fingers  sometimes  bleed,  and  his  nails  are 
worn  down  to  the  quick.  The  hours  of  toil  for  slate-pickers  are 
supposed  to  be  from  seven  in  the  morning  until  noon,  and  from 
one  to  six  in  the  afternoon;  but  when  the  colliery  is  running  on 
"full  capacity  orders,"  the  noon  recess  is  reduced  to  half  an  hour, 
and  the  goodnight  whistle  does  not  blow  until  half-past  six.  For 
his  eleven  hours'  work  the  breaker  boy  gets  no  more  pay  than  for 
ten. 

The  wages  of  breaker  boys  are  about  the ,  same  all  over  the 
coal  regions.  When  he  begins  to  work  at  slate  picking  a  boy  re- 
ceives forty  cents  a  day,  and  as  he  becomes  more  expert  the 
amount  is  increased  until  at  the  end  of,  say,  his  fourth  year  in  the 
breaker,  his  daily  wage  may  have  reached  ninety  cents.  This  is 
the  maximum  for  an  especially  industrious  and  skillful  boy.  The 
average  is  about  seventy  cents  a  day.  From  the  ranks  of  the 
older  breaker  boys  are  chosen  door-boys  and  runners,  who  work 
in  the  mines  below  ground. 

The  number  of  boys  who  work  in  hard  coal  mines  is  im- 
perfectly realized  in  the  rest  of  the  United  States.  According  to 
the  report  of  the  Bureau  of  Mines  of  Pennsylvania  for  1901, 
147,651  persons  were  employed  "inside  and  outside  the  mines  of 
the  anthracite  region."  Of  these,  19,564  were  classified  as  slate- 
pickers,  3,148  as  door-boys  and  helpers,  and  10,894  as  drivers  and 
runners. 

The  report  makes  no  classification  of  miners  by  their  ages, 
but  I  am  convinced  that  90  per  cent,  of  the  slate-pickers,  30  per 
cent,  of  the  drivers  and  runners,  and  all  of  the  door-boys  and 
helpers  are  boys.  In  other  words,  a  total  of  24,023,  or  nearly 
one-sixth  of  all  the  employees  of  the  anthracite  coal  mines,  are 
children. 

Age  Certificates  and  What  They  Amount  To 

According  to  the  mining  laws  of  Pennsylvania,  "no  boy  un- 
der the  age  of  fourteen  shall  be  employed  in  a  mine,  nor  shall 
a  boy  under  the  age  of  twelve  be  employed  in  or  about  the  out- 
side structures  or  workings  of  a  colliery"   (i.e.,  in  a  breaker). 


136  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Yet  no  one  who  stands  by  the  side  of  a  breaker  boss  and  looks 
up  at  the  tiers  of  benches  that  rise  from  the  floor  to  the  coal- 
begrimed  roof  can  believe  for  a  minute  that  the  law  has  been 
complied  with  in  the  case  of  one  in  ten  of  the  tiny  figures  in 
blue  jumpers  and  overalls  bending  over  the  chutes.  The  mine 
inspector  and  the  breaker  boss  will  explain  that  "these  boys 
look  younger  than  their  ages  is,"  and  that  a  sworn  certificate 
setting  forth  the  age  of  every  boy  is  on  file  in  the  office. 

Children's  age  certificates  are  a  criminal  institution.  When 
a  father  wishes  to  place  his  son  in  a  breaker,  he  obtains  an  "age 
blank"  from  a  mine  inspector,  and  in  its  space  he  has  inserted 
some  age  at  which  it  is  legal  for  a  boy  to  work.  He  carries 
the  certificate  to  a  notary  public  or  justice  of  the  peace,  who, 
in  consideration  of  a  fee  of  twenty-five  cents,  administers  oath 
to  the  parent  and  affixes  a  notarial  seal  to  the  certificate. 
Justifiable  and  Unjustifiable  Perjury 

According  to  the  ethics  of  the  coal  fields,  it  is  not  wrong  for  a 
miner  or  his  family  to  lie  or  to  practise  any  form  of  deceit  in 
dealing  with  coal-mine  operators  or  owners.  A  parent  is 
justified  in  perjuring  himself  as  to  his  son's  age  on  a  certificate 
that  will  be  filed  with  the  mine  superintendent,  but  any  state- 
ment made  to  a  representative  of  the  union  must  be  absolutely 
truthful.  For  this  reason  my  inquiries  of  mine  boys  as  to 
their  work  and  ages  were  always  conducted  under  the  sacred 
auspices  of  the  union. 

Testimony  "On  the  Level" 

The  interrogative  colloquy  was  invariably  something  like  this : 

"How  old  are  you?" 

Boy :  "Thirteen ;  going  on  fourteen." 

Secretary  of  the  Local:  "On  the  level  now,  this  is  union 
business.     You  can  speak  free,  understand." 

Boy :  "Oh.  dat's  a  diffurnt  t'ing  altogether.  I'm  nine  years 
old.  I've  been  working  since  me  fadder  got  hurted  in  th'  ex- 
plosion in  No.  17,  year  ago  last  October." 

A  system  of  compulsory  registration  of  births,  such  as  exists 
in  most  of  the  other  States  of  the  Union,  might  settle  the 
question   of   the   ages   of   children,   but,    strangely   enough,    such 


CHILD   LABOR  137 

does    not   exist    in   the    State    of    Pennsylvania.      Without    some 
such  source  of  evidence,  notaries  and  inspectors,  knowing  to  a 
moral  certainty  the  perjury,  can  prove  nothing. 
Where  the  Daughters  Work 

While  the  miner's  son  is  working  in  the  breaker  or  mine  it 
is  probable  that  his  daughter  is  employed  in  a  mill  or  factory. 
Sometimes  in  a  mining  town,  sometimes  in  a  remote  part  of 
the  coal  fields,  one  comes  upon  a  large,  substantial  building  of 
wood  or  brick.  When  the  six  o'clock  whistle  blows,  its  front 
door  is  opened,  and  out  streams  a  procession  of  girls.  Some  of 
them  are  apparently  seventeen  or  eighteen  years  old,  the  major- 
ity are  from  thirteen  to  sixteen,  but  quite  a  number  would  seem 
to  be  considerably  less  than  thirteen.  Such  a  building  is  one  of 
the  knitting  mills  or  silk  factories  that  during  the  last  ten  years 
have  come  into  Anthracite.  Underwear  and  men's  socks  are 
now  manufactured  in  large  quantities  near  many  of  the  mining 
towns.  The  silk  factories  are  usually  offshoots  of  older  estab- 
lishments in  other  parts  of  the  country.  Anthracite  is  away  from 
the  main  lines  of  railroad ;  it  is  at  an  unnecessarily  long  dis- 
tance from  the  markets  where  the  product  of  the  mill  is  sold ; 
the  raw  material  used  on  the  spindles  and  looms  must  be  trans- 
ported from  afar. 

Why  the  Mills  Have  Come  to  the  Coal  Regions 

The  factory  inspector  will  tell  you,  "The  mills  locate  in  An- 
thracite because  they  all  employ  girls,  and  girl  labor  is  cheaper 
here  than  anywhere  else."  A  glance  at  a  "textile"  map  of  Penn- 
sylvania will  show  that  wherever  there  are  miners,  there  cluster 
mills  that  employ  "cheap  girl  labor."  Besides  silk  and  hosiery 
a  local  feminine  industry  is  the  manufacture  of  the  fuses  or 
"squibs"  which  are  used  in  coal  blasting.  The  statistics  of  the 
nine  counties  of  Anthracite  count  up  11,216  "females"  employed 
in  them,  2,403  between  twelve  and  sixteen  years  of  age. 

The  perjury  certificate  prevails  for  the  girls,  as  well  as  the 
boys,  and  I  estimate  that  90  per  cent,  of  the  11,216  females  are 
girls  who  have  not  yet  reached  womanhood.  They  work  ten 
hours  a  day,  and  the  majority  stand  all  of  that  time,  having  a 
chance  to  sit  only  in  the  noon  "hour.  This  brings  on  a  character- 
istic  lameness  in  the  girls   during  their  first  year  at  the  mill. 


138  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

The  report  of  the  Secretary  of  Internal  Affairs  of  the  State 
places  the  "average  daily  wage  of  children  between  the  ages  of 
thirteen  and  sixteen"  employed  in  the  manufacturing  of  under- 
wear at  forty-seven  cents,  in  hosiery  mills  at  forty-six  cents. 
More  Testimony  "on  the  Level" 

Through  a  district  organizer  I  was  enabled  to  interview 
under  union  auspices  a  number  of  little  girls  who  were  em- 
ployed in  a  knitting  mill.  One  girl  of  fifteen  said  that  she 
was  the  oldest  of  seven  children.  She  had  worked  in  the  mill 
since  she  was  nine  years  old.  Her  father  was  a  miner.  As 
pay  for  "raveling"  she  received  an  amount  between  $2.50  and  $3 
every  two  weeks.  Another  thirteen-year  old  raveler  had  worked 
since  the  death  of  her  father,  two  years  before,  from  miner's 
asthma;  her  brother  had  been  killed  in  the  mine.  The  $3  she 
received  every  two  weeks  in  her  pay  envelope  supported  her 
mother  and  her  ten-year-old  sister.  A  girl  of  fourteen  had 
"looked  over"  stockings  for  two  years.  She  was  able  to  make 
about  $4  every  two  weeks.  A  "looper"  of  fifteen  received  $6 
every  fortnight.  She  had  worked  for  four  years.  Her  father 
was  a  confirmed  invalid.  Yet  all  these  children  seemed  to  take 
great  pride  in  assuring  me  that  their  "papers  was  all  right  and 
sworn  to  when  we  started  to  work." 

The  breaker  boss  finds  at  the  mill  or  factory  a  counterpart 
in  the  "forelady."  This  personage  holds  a  prominent  place  in  the 
civilization  of  Anthracite.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that  the 
forelady  must  be  habitually  hateful,  and  in  all  controversies  side 
with  the  proprietor  against  the  rest  of  the  girls.  It  is  her 
duty  to  crush  incipient  strikes,  and  to  do  all  in  her  power  to 
"break"  the  union.  She  enjoys  being  hated  by  every  one,  and 
leads  an  isolated  life  of  conscious  rectitude  for  about  $5  a  week. 

"How   many  pairs   of   socks  can   a  girl  make   in  a  day,"   I 
asked  a  forelady.  "They  can  easy  do  forty  dozen  pair  if  they 
is  good  workers,  but  none  of  them  is  good.    They  all  is  kickers. 
That's  what's  the  matter  with  them,"  was  her  reply. 
Boys'  and  Girls'  Unions 

And  they  do  "kick,"  both  boys  and  girls.  They  are  organized 
to  "kick."  The  children  have  their  unions  as  well  as  the  grown 


CHILD   LABOR  139 

folk.  Almost  as  soon  as  the  breaker  boy's  certificate  is  accepted 
and  placed  on  file  in  the  colliery  office  he  makes  application  to 
become  a  member  of  the  "Junior  Local,"  the  members  of 
which  are  all  boys  under  sixteen.  Their  weekly  meetings  take 
place  at  night,  and  are  conducted  with  the  utmost  secrecy,  the 
members  being  admitted  only  by  password.  The  monthly  dues 
range  from  ten  to  twenty-five  cents,  in  accordance  with  the  wages 
received  by  the  members. 

Every  Junior  Local  has  its  full  quota  of  officers,  from  pres- 
ident to  corresponding  secretary,  elected  semi-annually  by  the 
boys.  To  the  weekly  meetings  of  the  Junior  Local  the  regular 
Miners'  Union  of  the  district  sends  a  representative,  but  he  is  not 
an  officer  of  the  Juniors;  he  acts  only  as  referee  and  instructor. 
Education  in  the  Coal  Regions 

In  the  vicinity  of  every  mining  town  is  a  district  school,  whose 
usual  need  of  paint  and  general  appearance  of  dilapidation  gives 
evidence  of  its  slight  importance  in  the  life  of  the  community. 
According  to  the  State  law  the  schools  of  each  township  are 
under  the  exclusive  control  of  a  local  board  elected  by  the  voters 
of  the  district.  In  a  community  where  almost  the  entire  popula- 
tion are  miners  the  school  board  is  necessarily  composed  of 
miners;  the  schools  must  be  managed  from  the  union  miners' 
standpoint.  The  miner  on  the  school  board  is  no  better  educated 
than  the  rest  of  his  kind,  and  while  he  may  be  opposed  the- 
oretically to  child  labor,  he  regards  its  continuance  as  a  neces- 
sity, and  it  is  therefore  his  business  to  see  that  the  school  in 
no  way  interferes  with  a  parent's  prerogative  of  sending  his 
child  to  the  breaker  or  mill.  The  teacher  must  be  in  full  sym-. 
pathy  and  accord  with  the  union.  If,  as  the  result  of  going  to 
school,  a  child  should  learn  to  question  in  the  slightest  degree 
the  utterances  of  the  union,  then  the  teacher  is  at  fault,  because 
the  union  cannot  be  mistaken  about  anything. 

The  State  law  provides  for  the  appointment  of  "attendance 
officers,  whose  duty  it  shall  be  to  arrest  and  apprehend  truants 
and  others  who  fail  to  attend  school."  In  most  mining  towns 
such  an  officer  is  unknown.  School  boards  may,  under  the  law, 
"grant  the  use  of  school-houses  for  lyceums  and  other  literary 
purposes."    This  is  construed  to  mean  meetings  of  the  union,  and 


140  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

in  consequence  everywhere  in  the  coal  region  the  school-house 
is  the  recognized  headquarters  of  the  Local.  It  is  as  often  re- 
ferred to  in  this  connection  as  an  educational  institution.  An 
inquiry  for  a  miner  is  very  apt  to  be  met  with  the  response, 
"He's  up  to  the  school-house."  The  prevailing  idea  of  the  school 
in  Anthracite  is  an  institution  where  children  may  go  when  they 
have  nothing  else  to  do.  Except  during  strikes,  for  the  most 
part  the  pupils  are  less  than  seven  years  old. 

"Scab"  Scholars  and  "Scab"  Steam 

During  the  last  strike  a  number  of  breaker  boys  took  ad- 
vantage of  the  enforced  idleness  to  obtain  "two  months  of 
learning"  by  going  to  school ;  but  the  ruling  passion  of  their 
lives,  their  devotion  to  the  union,  found  expression  even  here. 
It  was  the  breaker  boys  who  organized  the  school  strikes  which 
occurred  in  many  mining  towns.  The  "cause"  was  character- 
istic. The  children  discovered  that  some  of  the  pupils  were 
the  children  of  bosses  or  non-union  men,  or  suspected  that  the 
teacher's  father  or  brother  or  sweetheart  "was  friendly  with  the 
scabs."  A  breaker  boy  who  belonged  to  the  Junior  Local  would 
call  the  school  together  at  recess  and  address  them.  However 
young  he  might  be  he  was  well  versed  in  the  arguments  of  the 
union.  He  told  the  other  pupils  that  "we  must  all  hang  to- 
gether now  if  we  wish  to  assert  our  manhood."  Such  an  orator 
always  found  ready  listeners,  and  during  the  afternoon,  when 
the  teacher's  back  was  turned  and  the  door  was  open,  the 
school  would  rise  en  masse  and  would  walk  out.  At  Plymouth 
a  school  strike  was  declared  for  another  cause.  By  an  arrange- 
ment with  a  neighboring  colliery,  the  steam  with  which  a  school 
was  heated  was  brought  from  the  boilers  of  the  power-house. 
During  the  strike  the  coal  company  employed  in  their  engine-room 
some  non-union  firemen.  When,  on  the  first  cold  day  of  the 
term,  steam  was  turned  on  in  the  school-house,  the  pupils  struck 
because  they  "wouldn't  sit  in  no  room  what  was  heated  by 
scab  steam."  School  strikes  were  usually  of  short  duration 
because  the  leaders  were  promptly  expelled,  and  their  followers 
were  too  young  "to  get  organized,"  as  a  school  strike  leader  in 
McAdoo  explained  to  me. 

This  leader  was  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  character  that 


CHILD   LABOR  141 

I  met  anywhere  in  the  nine  coal  counties.  He  said  that  he  was 
ten  years  old,  and  that  he  had  worked  in  the  breaker  a  year 
under  a  certificate  which  described  his  age  as  fourteen.  He 
could  neither  read  nor  write.  With  tobacco  juice  evident  about 
the  corners  of  his  mouth  as  he  talked,  he  explained  to  me  that 
"this  school  will  never  amount  to  nothing  until  it  is  organized." 
Although  school  strikes  are  usually  deprecated  by  miners,  sev- 
eral of  them  have  told  me  that  "they  couldn't  stand  for  having 
their  children  learning  in  the  same  room  with  a  non-union 
child." 

Painfully  ludicrous  and  pitiful  as  it  all  is,  it  is  perfectly  under- 
standable. The  children  of  the  Coal  Shadow  have  no  child  life. 
The  little  tots  are  sullen,  the  older  children  fight;  they  rarely 
play,  and  almost  their  only  amusement  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
union  and  the  strike  that  is  the  logical  result  of  the  conditions 
of  their  existence.  They  have  no  friends.  Their  parents, 
driven  by  what  they  think  is  necessity,  forswear  them  into 
bondage.  Their  employers,  compelled  by  what  they  regard  as 
economic  forces,  grind  them  to  hatred.  The  State,  ruled  by 
influences,  either  refrains  from  amalgamating  laws  or  corrective 
enforcement.  The  rest  of  the  world  doesn't  care.  So  the  shadow 
of  the  coal  heap  lies  dark  upon  these  "unionized"  little  ones  as 
they  grow  up  to  be  men  and  women.  Within  a  few  years  the 
breaker  boy  will  be  a  miner.  It  is  the  only  trade  with  which  he 
is  familiar,  and  his  lack  of  education  will  make  a  commercial 
or  professional  career  for  him  almost  impossible.  He  will 
have  to  live  in  Anthracite,  because  it  is  the  only  country  where 
a  hard-coal  miner  can  follow  his  trade.  The  mill  girl  will  marry 
early  in  life;  her  husband  will  be  a  miner.  They  will  both  be 
American  citizens.     They  will  remain  in  the  Coal  Shadow. 

Annals   of   the   American   Academy.    33:    Sup,    73-8. 
March,  1909. 

Child   Labor  in  the   Textile  Industries  and   Canneries  of 
New  England.     Everett  H.  Lord. 

Ever  since  the  first  cotton  mill  was  established  in  New  Eng- 
land, a  little  more  than  a  century  ago,  the  textile  industries  have 


142  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

rapidly  increased,  and  in  the  textile  mills,  which  to-day  are 
found  in  large  numbers  in  every  New  England  state,  a  large 
proportion  of  the  operatives  are  young  people.  Probably  in  every 
factory  town  at  least  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the  children  leave 
school  as  soon  as  they  reach  their  fourteenth  birthday,  and  al- 
most one  hundred  per  cent,  of  those  who  leave  at  this  time  go 
to  work  in  the  mills.  That  some  escape  from  school  before  they 
are  fourteen  and  enroll  themselves  among  the  workers  is 
undoubtedly  true,  but  the  number  probably  is  not  great.  The 
problem  of  child  labor  in  the  textile  mill  of  New  England  does 
not  primarily  deal  with  very  young  children.  It  is  true  that  dur- 
ing the  past  year  a  boy  of  nine  years  of  age  was  found  work- 
ing in  a  Vermont  woolen  mill,  .and  that  a  considerable  number  of 
children  under  the  legal  age  have  been  found  from  time  to  time 
in  mills  in  IMaine,  New  Hampshire  and  Rhode  Island.  These, 
however,  are  sporadic  instances  and  cannot  be  considered  as 
characteristic  of  the  industry. 

Most  manufacturers  desire  to  comply  with  the  law.  They 
neither  want  children  under  fourteen,  in  their  mills  nor  do  they 
wish  to  become  law-bVeakers.  The  few  who  have  little  respect 
for  the  law  are  likely  to  be  deterred  from  employing  children 
because  of  almost  certain  detection  and  consequent  punishment. 
The  children  who  get  into  the  mills  under  the  age  of  fourteen 
do  so  usually  through  misrepresenting  their  age.  In  Maine,  for 
instance,  the  law  has  required  only  that  the  employer  demand 
of  the  child  a  certificate  of  some  sort.  It  may  be  a  copy  of  the 
town  clerk's  record,  or  a  baptismal  record,  or  a  passport,  and 
some  employers  have  occasionally  accepted  certificates  of  doubt- 
ful authenticity. 

When  a  child  presents  a  paper  covered  with  Syrian  or  Hebrew 
characters  and  assures  the  mill  superintendent  that  the  paper  is 
his  birth  certificate,  showing  that  he  is  over  fourteen  years  of 
age,  the  superintendent  may  perhaps  be  excused  if  he  relies 
largely  upon  the  child's  statement.  In  some  cases,  however, 
certificates  obviously  false  have  been  accepted  by  employers, 
who  have  thus  appeared  to  conform  with  the  letter  of  the  law. 
but  have  shown  little  regard  for  its  intent.  In  other  states  the 
officials  who  have  to  pass  upon  the  age  of  children  have  some- 


CHILD   LABOR  143 

times  been  similarly  deceived,  so  that  we  have  come  to  recognize 
as  one  of  the  most  evident  defects  in  our  laws  the  method  of 
proving  the  age  of  children.  Until  we  can  determine  some  other 
standard  than  that  of  years  there  will  certainly  be  children  of 
foreign  birth  considerably  under  the  legal  age  at  work  in  our 
mills  and  factories.  A  high  educational  test  is  likely  to  work 
hardship  upon  those  children  who  come  to  this  country  at  some- 
what advanced  age  and  w-ho  can  hardly  be  expected  to  acquire  in 
a  year  or  two  the  English  education  demanded  of  children  born 
on  this  side  of  the  water.  Perhaps  some  definite  physical  test, 
which  shall  show  that  the  child  is  physically  able  to  perform  the 
work  of  the  mill,  without  strict  regard  to  the  age  in  years, 
may  be  found  to  be  the  most  satisfactory  solution  of  this 
problem. 

The  vital  problem  connected  with  the  employment  of  children 
and  young  people  in  the  New  England  textile  mills  is  probably 
not  the  physical  one.  Beginning  their  work  when  at  least  four- 
teen years  of  age,  working  in  mills  and  factories,  where  the 
hygienic  conditions  are  usually  fairly  good,  and  fortified  by  the 
invigorating  climate  of  New  England,  it  is  not  probable  that  a 
large  proportion  of  even  the  younger  operatives  suffer  greatly 
in  respect  to  their  health.  It  is  true  that  those  who  have  a 
predisposition  to  tuberculosis  may  develop  it  sooner  under  the 
conditions  which  prevail  in  the  factory;  similarly  those  who  are 
particularly  disposed  to  any  disease  may  sooner  suffer  from  its 
effects  if  they  are  deprived  of  the  advantages  of  outdoor  life 
and  exercise.  It  does  not  appear,  however,  from  a  comparison 
of  the  young  workers  in  factories  with  children  of  the  same  age 
in  our  public  schools  that  the  factory  workers  suffer  more  than 
do  the  school  children. 

The  3'oung  factory  workers  do  suffer,  however,  from  woeful 
lack  of  education,  and  the  evils  consequent.  Leaving  the  schools 
at  fourteen,  they  take  but  little  of  the  school  training  with  them, 
and  that  little  they  are  not  likely  to  apply.  Less  than  sixty  per 
cent,  of  the  children  have  completed  the  work  of  the  grammar 
grades  when  they  leave  school.  They  have  completed  no  course 
of  study — they  have  only  been  in  contact  with  some  elements  of 
culture,  and  have  usually  failed  to  absorb  much  from  their  con- 


144  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

tact.  Like  the  college  boy  whose  mother  said  that  "he  had  not 
taken  trigonometry,  but  had  been  exposed  to  it,"  they  have  been 
exposed  to  a  little  elementary  academic  culture,  but  few,  indeed, 
have  taken  any  of  it  with  them  when  they  have  left  the  school. 

Even  more  serious  than  their  slight  academic  education  is 
their  total  lack  of  industrial  training,  for  though  most  of  the 
young  workers  rank  considerably  above  the  grade  of  illiterates, 
practically  none  of  them  have  had  any  form  of  hand  training  or 
of  the  mental  training  which  accompanies  practical  hand-work. 
This  lack  is  felt  keenly  by  many  progressive  employers,  and  in 
some  of  the  mills  of  New  England  the  employers  are.  at  their 
own  expense,  providing  industrial  technical  training  for  some  of 
their  young  employees.  The  fact  that  in  their  mills  the  directive 
positions  are  practically  all  filled  by  men  of  foreign  birth  and  ed- 
ucation, indicates  somewhat  the  need  for  immediate  industrial 
training  of  the  young  workers.-  In  these  factories  where  the  op- 
portunity is  being  given  to  some  of  the  young  employees  to  con- 
tinue theireducation  the  successof  the  experiment  has  been  most 
encouraging.  While  the  expense  and  the  problems  of  super- 
vision and  direction  are  likely  to  deter  many  manufacturers 
from  undertaking  anything  of  the  sort,  it  may  be  that  the  in- 
creased value  of  the  workman  and  consequent  greater  return 
promised  for  the  future  will  tend  to  make  instruction  of  this 
sort  more  general.  If  children  must  be  allowed  to  go  to  work  at 
as  early  an  age  as  fourteen,  the  state  should  still  retain  some  hold 
upon  them  for  a  part  of  their  time,  requiring  and  aiding  them 
to  continue  their  education  along  industrial  and  some  carefully 
correlated  academic  lines,  until  they  reach  the  age  of  seventeen. 

Investigations  show  that  the  children  who  enter  textile  mills 
remain  in  that  industry,  though  they  may  and  often  do  shift  from 
mill  to  mill  and  from  town  to  town.  The  work  which  is  done 
in  the  mills  is  all  of  about  the  same  grade  and  offers  little  to  the 
adult  wage  earner;  yet  there  seems  to  be  no  way  out,  and  the 
workers  continue  their  unskilled  way,  earning  at  thirty  but  little 
more  than  they  did  at  fifteen  and  seeing  before  them  a  prospect 
of  continually  decreasing  returns  for  their  labors.  The  young 
workers  are  by  no  means  altogether  from  the  poorest  homes. 
Many  of  them  have  parents  who  are  in  very  comfortable  cir- 


CHILD   LABOR  145 

cumstances  and  who  could  well  afford  to  maintain  their  children 
until  they  had  acquired  a  more  complete  education.  Dissatis- 
faction with  the  school,  a  dissatisfaction  to  some  extent  justifi- 
able, added  to  lack  of  foresight  and  parental  ignorance  or  indif- 
ference accounts  for  the  presence  of  the  vast  majority  of  the 
children  in  the  mills.  They  gain  neither  in  efficiency  nor  in  earn- 
ing power,  but  they  have  closed  behind  them  the  door  to  prog- 
ress in  other  lines  of  employment  which  offer  a  fair  living 
wage,  and  have  associated  themselves  with  the  least  enter- 
prising class  of  our  population.  The  state  cannot  remain  in- 
different to  the  needs  of  this  large  body  of  young  people  who 
have  in  them  the  making  of  good  citizens,  but  whose  citizenship 
is  too  often  spoiled  in  the  making. 

The  one  industry  in  New  England  in  which  children  are  prac- 
tically without  legal  protection  is  the  canning  industry  in  Maine. 
By  an  unfortunate  exemption  the  law  relating  to  child  labor  is 
made  inapplicable  to  any  manufacturing  establishment  the  mate- 
rials and  products  of  which  are  perishable.  It  does  not  seem  to 
have  been  considered  by  the  legislators  who  established  this 
standard  that  the  children  who  were  working  in  the  canneries 
were  al?o  perishable.  Surely  it  was  not  intended  to  rate  chil- 
dren as  cheaper  than  fish,  for  it  is  especially  to  the  canning  of 
fish  that  this  law  applied,  yet  that  seems  a  logical  deduction  to 
draw. 

Along  the  eastern  coast  of  Maine  there  has  grown  up  a 
great  industry  in  competition  with  the  sardine  packei-s  of  France 
and  southern  Europe.  The  herring,  which  are  found  in  great 
numbers  along  the  coast,  when  properly  prepared  and  canned, 
serve  as  a  fairly  passable  substitute  for  sardines,  and  go  into 
the  market  under  that  name.  Years  ago  I  visited  a  canning 
factory  in  which  there  were  packed  three  different  products, 
French  sardines,  brook  trout,  and  mackerel,  all  of  them  being 
known  as  herring  before  they  were  canned.  The  fish  are 
gathered  in  seines  and  weirs,  and  are  taken  in  motor  boats  to 
the  nearest  factories.  As  soon  as  a  load  of  fish  is  received  at  the 
factory  the  herring  are  taken  out,  cut  to  the  required  size,  and 
placed  upon  flakes  for  drying  and  cooking.  The*  cutting  and 
flaking   is    commonly   done   by   women    and   children.     The   fish 


146  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

must  be  cut  and  cleaned  as  soon  as  they  are  delivered  at  the  can- 
neries. This  may  be  in  the  early  morning,  or  at  any  time  during 
the  day  or  evening,  or  even  late  at  night.  When  a  boat  arrives, 
the  cannery  whistle  blows  for  cutters,  and  whether  they  are 
at  play  in  the  streets  or  asleep  in  their  beds  matters  not,  the  call 
must  be  obeyed,  and  the  children  go  in  troops  to  the  shop.  If 
work  begins  late  in  the  day  it  may  last  until  late  at  night,  and 
in  consequence  it  is  not  uncommon  to  see  children  of  eight  or  ten 
years  of  age  returning  home  from  their  work  at  midnight,  per- 
haps to  be  called  out  again  in  the  gray  of  the  early  dawn. 

The  operation  of  flaking  is  simple,  and  the  children's  deft  fin- 
gers often  can  do  more  than  can  adults'.  The  flaked  fish  are  taken 
to  the  ovens,  where  they  are  cooked  in  steam ;  then  they  are 
packed  in  the  cans,  a  part  of  the  work  done  entirely  by  women 
and  children.  The  oil  or  mustard,  or  whatever  flavor  is  to  be 
given  to  the  fish,  is  then  placed  in  the  cans,  and  they  are  passed 
through  the  topping  machine,  which  is  usually  operated  by  a  man 
and  one  or  two  boys.  None  of  the  work  is  particularly  exhaust- 
ing, and  the  rooms  are  usually  open  to  the  air.  At  the  same  time, 
the  operatives  frequently  work  long  hours,  as  it  is  customary  to 
can  all  the  fish  which  may  be  at  hand  before  stopping.  In  the 
busy  seasons  the  factories  sometimes  run  fifteen  or  sixteen  hours 
^t  a  stretch,  and  women  and  children  remain  as  long  as  the 
factory  is  open.  The  surroundings,  especially  in  the  cutting 
room,  are  likely  to  be  disgustingly  dirty,  but  they  are  perhaps 
not  unhealthful.  The  chief  menace  to  the  health  lies  in  the 
irregularity  of  work  and  corresponding  irregularity  of  home 
life. 

It  is  impossible  to  say  how  many  children  are  working  in 
these  canneries,  but  as  a  conservative  estimate  I  should  say  that 
during  the  busy  season  not  less  than  a  thousand  children  under 
fourteen  years  of  age  are  so  employed.  There  are  a  good  many 
children  as  young  as  eight  or  nine  who  work  in  the  flaking  rooms. 
These  little  ones  do  not  always  remain  throughout  the  entire  day, 
but  as  they  are  paid  by  the  piece  some  of  them  stay  until  they 
have  earned  enough  to  satisfy  them  for  the  day,  and  then  go  to 
their  homes.  Others,  either  because  of  their  own  desire  or  be- 
cause they  may  be  required  to  remain,  work  as  long  as  the  fish 


CHILD   LABOR  147 

last.  I  have  found  one  child  of  only  five  working  in  the  packing 
room,  usually  employed  as  long  as  the  other  workers,  and  earn- 
ing from  eight  to  twelve  cents  per  day. 

In  many  of  the  sardine  factories  much  machinery  is  used ;  the 
law  does  not  require  the  safeguarding  of  this  machinery  as  it 
does  in  other  factories,  and  a  child  worker  has  to  take  upon  him- 
self "the  risks  of  his  employment."  If  he  is  injured,  the  employ- 
er is  not  liable  for  damages.  In  one  instance,  recently  repor.ed,  a 
girl,  only  nine  years  of  age,  lost  her  hand  while  playing  about  a 
drier.  Xo  damages  could  be  recovered ;  the  girl  was  supposed 
to  know  that  the  machine  was  dangerous,  and  had  no  business  to 
be  playing  near  it. 

Sardine  canning  is  a  seasonal  industry,  and  this  is  urged  by 
some  as  extenuation  for  the  employment  of  children.  They  say 
the  children  are  engaged  only  during  vacation  seasons,  and  so  are 
not  necessarily  deprived  of  school  facilities.  The  season,  how- 
ever, lasts  from  April  15  to  December  15,  leaving  only  four 
months  of  the  year  when  the  children  are  free  from  the  call  of 
the  factory.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  believe  that  this  seasonal 
employment  is  one  of  the  worst  features  of  the  business,  involv- 
ing as  it  does  a  long  period  of  idleness,  and  setting  before  the 
children  the  example  of  their  elders,  who  quite  commonly  rely 
upon  their  season's  work  for  their  entire  support.  Spending  the 
winter  months  in  idleness  and  dissipation,  the  parents  are  not 
likely  to  insist  upon  sending  their  children  to  school  during  these 
free  months,  and  the  children  are  certain  to  acquire  ways  of 
irregularity  which  are  fatal  to  worthy  industrial  habits. 

The  moral  atmosphere  of  the  sardine  factory  is  far  from 
wholesome.  Washington  County,  in  which  nearly  all  the  can- 
neries are  located,  is  reported  to  have  had  more  juvenile  crim- 
inals in  its  courts  during  the  past  twenty  years  than  any  other 
county  in  Maine,  and  probably  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  these 
young  criminals  have  been  sardine  workers.  Few  of  them  are 
native  born ;  indeed,  few  of  them  have  permanent  residence  in 
the  county  or  the  state.  The  industry  attracts  a  low  grade  of 
workers  from  a  wide  section,  many  coming  from  Canada.  This 
makes  the  problem  much  more  difficult  for  the  local  town  au- 
thorities; their  schools  are  not  prepared  to  receive  great  numbers 


148  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

of  children  from  other  localities,  and  so  the  truant  officers  sel- 
dom visit  the  factory  camp.  The  old  residents  look  upon  the 
factory  workers  with  a  good  deal  of  contempt,  and  feel  unwilling 
to  interfere  in  their  behalf.  The  churches  find  the  problem  so 
hopeless  that  they  have  largely  abandoned  it,  and  until  the  state 
extends  its  protection  there  seems  little  prospect  for  improving 
the  present  evil  conditions. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  33:  278-86.  March,  1909. 

Condition  of  Labor  in  Southern  Cotton  Mills.  Lewis  W.  Parker. 

Criticism  of  southern  mill  conditions  is  usually  directed  to 
two  subjects,  viz.,  the  general  character  of  the  employees  and 
secondly,  the  proportion  of  child  labor.  As  to  the  first,  it  can 
only  be  said  that  from  the  evidence  of  well-advised  and  impartial 
students,  the  character  of  the  employees  is  being  steadily  raised, 
and  is  superior  to  that  in  their  former  life.  This  is  the  verdict 
of  such  investigators  as  Miss  Gertrude  Beeks,  secretary  of  the 
welfare  department  of  the  National  Civic  Federation;  of  Mrs. 
Ellen  Foster,  a  well-known  authority  in  sociology,  who  as  an 
employee  of  the  government,  made  a  report  to  the  President  of 
the  United  States  to  this  effect;  of  Dr.  P.  H.  Goldsmith,  the 
minister  of  the  historic  First  Church  in  Salem,  Massachusetts, 
who  whilst  a  native  of  the  South,  has  spent  most  of  his  adult 
years  in  the  North.  In  a  series  of  articles  appearing  in  1908  in 
the  "Boston  Evening  Transcript,"  Doctor  Goldsmith  wrote  as 
follows:  "The  only  just  comparison  is  between  their  present  and 
their  past  state.  In  going  through  mills  of  the  Piedmont  section 
recently,  I  invariably  saw  the  best-looking  people,  the  most  intel- 
ligent workmen,  the  brightest  and  happiest  children,  and  cheeks 
possessing  the  most  color,  in  the  factories  of  longest  estab- 
lishment." The  same  conclusion  is  reached  by  Professor 
Few  in  the  article  referred  to. 

With  regard  to  child  labor,  there  is  no  doubt  that  at  certain 
stages  in  the  development  of  the  industry  the  proportion  of  chil- 
dren in  the  mills  was  unduly  large,  and  was  unfortunate.  The 
reasons  for  this,  however,  were  two-fold.  In  the  first  place, 
when  the   family  came  to  the  mill  village,  the  older  members 


CHILD   LABOR  149 

of  the  family  were  unfit  for  the  most  skilful  parts  of  the  work. 
The  father  had  acquired  habits  whi(;h  made  it  impossible  for  him. 
to  be  active  and  quick  enough  to  be  a  spinner  or  wea\^r.  His 
fingers  had  been  so  gnarled  and  roughened  by  agricultural  work 
as  to  be  unsuitable  for  the  tying  of  small  threads.  He  could 
earn  only  the  wage  of  the  common  laborer,  and  no  one  could 
supply  the  places  in  the  factory  requiring  an  active  and  nimble 
finger,  except  the  younger  members  of  the  family.  Again,  these 
could  be  secured  at  low  wage,  and  many  manufacturers  were 
misled  into  the  belief  that  a  low  wage  was  necessarily  an  inci- 
dent to  a  low  cost  of  production.  In  the  progress  of  the  in- 
dustry, and  in  the  succession  of  years,  a  new  generation  is 
growing  up,  and  the  mills  have  found  it  practicable  and  ad- 
visable to  supplant  the  younger  children  by  youths  and  adults. 
The  proportion  of  children  of  tender  age — say  fourteen  years 
and  under — in  employment  in  the  mills  now,  for  the  reasons 
above,  is  very  much  less  than  it  was  five  or  ten  years  ago,  and 
this  proportion,  irrespective  of  legislation,  will  continue  to  grow 
less.  The  child  is  the  most  expensive  employee  that  the  mill 
has.  From  the  writer's  experience,  the  mill  can  well  afford  to 
pay  more  per  piece  or  per  machine  for  work  done  by  the  adult 
than  for  similar  work  done  by  the  young  child.  A  spinner,  for 
instance,  who  is  paid  by  the  machine,  or  by  the  "side,"  as  it  is 
called,  taking,  in  print  cloth  numbers,  say  twelve  sides,  is  a 
much  more  economical  employee  to  the  mill  than  a  child  who 
is  paid  the  same  price  per  side  and  who  takes  only  four  or  six 
sides.  The  results  to  the  mill  of  the  day's  work  are  much  better 
in  the  case  of  the  adult  than  the  child,  and  experience  in  this  has 
tended  of  itself  to  decrease  the  number  of  children  in  employ- 
ment. In  addition  to  this  fact,  the  bettered  circumstances  of  the 
family  have  tended  to  the  same  efifect.  In  the  pamphlet  referred 
to  by  Mr.  Kohn.  he  says,  "With  the  increase  of  wage  there  has 
been  a  corresponding  decrease  of  employment  of  children.  This 
effect  will  continue  until  in  my  judgment  the  proportion  of 
objectionably  young  children  in  the  mills  will  altogether  cease." 
I  differ,  therefore,  altogether  from  those  who  would  proclaim 
that  there  is  a  constant  increase  of  the  employment  of  children 
in  southern  cotton  mills.  My  conclusion  would  be  exactly  the 


150  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

reverse  and  this  conclusion  will  be  borne  out  by  the  census  of 
the  United  States,  I  believe,  as  it  is  by  careful  statisticians  such 
as  Mr.  Kohn.  The  latter,  in  referring  to  the  question  of  employ- 
ment of  children  in  South  Carolina  said,  "The  more  I  study  the 
question,  the  more  I  become  convinced  that  the  tendency  of  the 
outsider  was  to  exaggerate  the  number  of  children  in  the  mills, 
and  the  tendency  of  the  mill  presidents  was  to  keep  the  children 
out  of  the  mills,  if  for  no  other  than  for  economic  reasons." 
That  the  manufacturers  of  South  Carolina  are  sincere  in 
their  desire  and  intention  of  keeping  the  young  children  out  of 
the  mills  is  proven  by  their  course  with  regard  to  legislation. 
No  persons  in  the  state  have  been  more  persistent  in  their 
advocacy  of  a  general  compulsory  school  law  than  have  the 
manufacturers.  With  the  election  of  each  new  legislature  for 
the  past  six  or  more  years,  these  manufacturers  have  presented 
to  the  legislature  a  petition,  seeking  the  enactment  of  laws  re- 
quiring the  compulsory  education  of  children.  At  a  meeting  of 
the  Cotton  Manufacturers*  Association  of  South  Carolina,  held 
but  a  few  weeks  ago,  a  resolution  was  adopted,  memorializing 
the  legislature  to  pass  a  compulsory  school  law,  requiring  the 
attendance  of  all  children  under  the  age  of  fourteen  years,  and 
stating  that  in  the  judgment  of  the  manufacturers,  such  a  law 
would  be  the  most  effective  child  labor  law  which  could  be 
passed,  and  furthermore  stating  that  if  such  a  law  were  passed, 
the  manufacturers  would  make  no  objection  whatever  to  the 
passage  of  a  child  labor  bill  forbidding  the  employment  of  chil- 
dren, in  cotton  mills,  under  the  age  of  fourteen.  In  other 
words,  the  manufacturers  have  believed,  in  common  with  many 
thinking  people  in  other  communities,  that  a  compulsory  educa- 
tion law  was  a  proper  and  necessary  incident  to  a  child  labor 
law,  and  have  urged  the  enactment  of  the  two  bills  at  the  same 
time.  At  the  present  time,  the  child  labor  law  in  South  Carolina 
prohibits  only  the  employment  of  children  under  twelve.  The 
manufacturers  of  the  state  are  willing  to  raise  this  age  limit  to 
fourteen,  if  legislation  to  this  eflfect  be  accompanied  by  a  com- 
pulsory school  law.  In  any  event,  there  can  be  no  question  in 
the  mind  of  any  impartial  student  of  conditions  that  there  is  a 
steady  decrease  in  the  proportion  of  children  employed,  and  this 


CHILD   LABOR  151 

decrease  will  continue  for  the  reasons  outlined.  It  is  most  un- 
fortunate that  many  who  are  honestly  seeking  the  prohibition  of 
child  labor  should  find  it  necessary  to  greatly  exaggerate  its 
present  evils.  For  illustration,  a  very  general  impression  has 
been  created  by  writers  upon  and  critics  of  southern  cotton  mills 
that  it  was  usual  in  all  the  southern  states  to  work  children  at 
night.  Just  criticism  of  this  practice  may  be  made  of  some 
states,  but  as  to  South  Carolina,  the  incorrectness  of  such  a  view 
is  apparent,  when  it  is  known  that  there  are  practically  no  mills 
in  South  Carolina  operating  at  night.  The  writer  thinks  that  he 
is  familiar  with  the  large  proportion  of  mills  in  the  state,  and 
certainly  lives  and  operates  mills  in  that  section  in  which  the 
industry  is  most  thriving,  and  in  which  the  largest  number  of 
plants  are  located.  Yet,  to  his  knowledge,  there  is  not  in  the 
counties  of  Spartanburg,  Anderson  and  Greenville,  in  which  are 
a  large  majority  of  the  spindles  of  the  state,  a  single  mill  operat- 
ing at  night,  and  he  knows  of  but  two  plants  in  the  whole  state 
— and  these  are  of  but  comparatively  small  size — which  operate 
at  night.  The  manufacturers  have  not  sought  to  prevent  legisla- 
tion prohibiting  the  employment  of  children  at  night,  and  with- 
out objection  on  their  part,  and  indeed,  on  their  recommenda- 
tion, there  was  passed  several  years  ago  a  bill  prohibiting  the 
employment  of  children  under  the  age  of  twelve,  between  the 
hours  of  seven  p.  m.  and  six  a.  m. ;  and  there  is  now  pending 
before  the  legislature  a  bill,  which  is  meeting  with  no  objection 
on  their  part,  prohibiting  the  employment  of  children  under  the 
age  of  sixteen  years  between  such  hours. 

The  condition  of  the  employee  in  southern  mills  is  steadily 
improving,  and  the  percentage  and  number  of  young  children 
in  employment  is  steadily  decreasing.  These  two  results  must 
be  a  cause  of  congratulation  to  the  people  of  the  whole  Union, 
as  unquestionably  they  are  to  the  people  of  the  southern  states. 
These  results  have  been  certainly  to  a  very  large  measure  con- 
sequent upon  the  work  of  the  manufacturers  themselves. 

In  conclusion,  I  would  quote  again  from  the  article  of  Pro- 
fessor Few,  already  referred  to,  in  which  he  says,  "Much  still 
remains  to  be  done,  but  this  is  not  going  to  be  done  by  crude, 
unfair  or  evil-minded  agitators,  or  by  well-meaning  but  ill-in- 


152  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

formed  sentimentalists.  The  working  out  through  actual  ex- 
perience, step  by  step,  as  is  being  done  by  the  mill  referred  to, 
of  the  hard  problems  of  factory  life,  is  worth  more  than  any 
amount  of  vague  theorizings  of  idealists." 

Outlook.  78:  982-5.  December  17,  1904. 

Child  Labor  in  Eastern  Pennsylvania.     Peter  Roberts. 

The  industries  in  which  young  children  are  employed  in  the 
State  of  Pennsylvania  are  those  of  silk,  hosiery,  cotton,  woolen, 
tobacco,  candy,  box,  umbrella,  school  slate,  rope,  wire,  nut  and 
bolt,  lock,  etc.  Nearly  all  these  factories  are  located,  east  of 
Harrisburg,  and  of  the  forty  thousand  children  under  sixteen 
years  of  age  employed  in  this  State,  eighty-five  per  cent,  labor 
in  mills  and  factories  located  in  twelve  counties  east  of  our 
capital. 

No  child  under  thirteen  years  of  ag&can,  according  to  law,  be 
regularly  employed,  but  in  every  industrial  center  where  children 
are  to  any  extent  employed  the  consensus  of  opinion  among  labor 
leaders  and  professional  men  is  that  the  law  is  evaded.  A  labor 
leader  in  Lancaster  said,  "I'll  swear  by  a  stack  of  Bibles  as  high 
as  the  Lutheran  church  that  there  are  scores  of  children  under 
thirteen  years  of  age  in  these  factories."  In  Allentown  child 
labor  is  at  a  premium  while  men  walk  the  streets  unable  to  get 
work.  A  silk  manufacturer  of  this  city  said,  "All  silk-throwing 
plants  ought  to  get  out  of  Allentown,  for  child  labor  is  too 
scarce."  In  Reading  a  hosiery  manufacturer  said,  "We  cannot 
get  all  the  boys  and  girls  we  need  in  our  factories."  Employers, 
when  asked,  "Do  parents  try  to  secure  employment  to  children 
under  age?"  invariably  answered,  "Yes."  Superintendents  of  pub- 
lic schools,  in  centers  of  textile  industries  are  uniform  in  their 
testimony  that  a  certain  percentage  of  parents  take  their  children 
from  school  when  they  are  only  ten,  eleven,  or  twelve  years  of 
age  and  send  them  to  the  factory  or  mill.  Physicians  who 
practice  among  employees  in  mills  and  factories  are  unanimous 
in  their  testimony  that  children  are  employed  before  they  are 
thirteen  years  of  age.  Lawyer  Craig,  of  Lebanon,  said,  "Stop 
ignorant  and  greedy  parents  from  committing  perjury  when  they 
take    out    certificates    of    employment    to    their    children."      Dr. 


CHILD   LABOR  153 

Davies,  of  Lancaster,  said,  "Execute  the  laws  now  in  force  before 
you  attempt  to  pass  others." 

Is  this  expression  of  public  sentiment  justified?  In  every  in- 
dustrial center  there  are  humane  and  patriotic  employers,  but 
they  must  compete  with  sinister  and  heartless  men  who  regard 
all  consideration  for  tender  children  seeking  employmexit  as 
'"sentiment"  which  has  no  place  in  business  relations.  In  every 
large  city  there  are  factories  of  ill  repute,  wherein  conditions  are 
wretched,  wages  low,  and  the  moral  atmosphere  degrading.  I 
visited  one  of  these  where  six  hundred  employees  labored,  sixty- 
five  per  cent,  of  whom  were  under  sixteen  years  of  age.  Six 
months  ago  a  strike  had  occurred  in  this  factory.  I  asked  a  boy 
seventeen  years  old  if  they  had  won  it;  his  reply  was,  "No;  the 
kids  defeated  us."  Among  these  employees  it  would  be  easy  t6 
select  a  score  or  two  of  boys  and  girls  under  thirteen  years.  The 
deputy  factory  inspector  has  sent  home  as  many  as  thirty  em- 
ployees from  this  mill  in  one  day,  but  within  a  week  most  of 
them  were  back  again.  The  two  wards  from  which  the  employer 
draws  his  labor  supply  are  the  most  congested  in  the  city,  and  one 
of  them  is  being  rapidly  filled  by  an  influx  of  Slavs  and  Italians. 
A  public  school  superintendent,  who  has  taught  in  these  two 
wards  for  fifteen  years,  said,  "It's  an  impossibility  to  stop  the 
exodus  of  boys  and  girls  to  the  mills  before  they  are  thirteen 
years  of  age."  He  had  conducted  night  school  for  many  years  in 
these  wards,  and  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  boys  attending  them  were 
doing  primary  work.  In  the  town  of  Freeland  I  met  three  sisters 
coming  home  from  the  silk-mill.  Each  of  them  began  to  work 
when  she  was  twelve  years  of  age.  The  superintendent  of  public 
schools  in  this  borough  said,  "Boys  and  girls  leave  my  schools  in 
large  numbers  from  ten  to  twelve  years  of  age.  Some  leave  be- 
fore they  are  ten  years."  In  my  visit  through  silk  and  hosiery 
mills,  rope  and  school  slate  factories,  cigar  and  candy  establish- 
ments, I  saw  anaemic  children,  under  the  legal  age,  with  frail 
constitutions,  working  sixty  hours  a  week.  Some  of  these  were 
stunted  and  deformed,  whom  competent  physicians  would  send 
to  hospitals  rather  than  have  them  work  ten  hours  a  day  in  a 
vitiated  atmosphere  for  three  cents  an  hour. 

Do  not  factory  inspectors  know  this?     Yes;  but  their  hands 
are  tied  by  political  influence.    When  Gus  Egolf,  of  Norristown, 


154  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

was  appointed  deputy  factory  inspector  last  June,  he  turned  out 
in  one  week  two  hundred  children  illegally  employed  in  his 
district.  In  one  borough  of  eight  thousand  population  he  sent 
home  fifty  children  from  factories.  When  Deputy  Factory  In- 
spector Betchel  was  appointed  last  June,  over  five  hundred 
children  illegally  employed  were  found  in  Berks  County  alone. 
In  one  borough  he  sent  home  forty-five  children  from  nine  to 
twelve  years,  who  were  employed  contrary  to  law.  He  prosecuted 
the  Mayor  of  the  city  of  Reading  for  illegally  giving  two  boys 
certificates  of  employment.  The  Mayor  paid  a  fine  of  thirty-one 
dollars.  He  also  successfully  prosecuted  an  Alderman  for  the 
same  offense  in  the  same  city.  In  another  city  the  factory  in- 
spector tried  to  prosecute  an  Alderman  who  issued  certificates 
of  employment  to  children  not  legally  qualified  to  work.  He  did 
not  succeed,  for  the  reason  that  no  Justice  of  the  Peace  would 
try  a  "brother  officer."  One  factory  inspector  candidly  admitted 
that  he  could  not  discharge  his  duties  in  the  town  in  which  he 
resided;  if  he  did,  he  would  commit  political  suicide  within  six 
months.  Another  factory  inspector  successfully  prosecuted  an 
influential  employer.  The  suit  cost  the  employer  four  hundred 
dollars,  and  the  inspector  his  office.  The  Central  Labor  Union  of 
Lancaster  prosecuted  the  leading  factory  in  the  city  for  employ- 
ing children  contrary  to  law.  The  case  has  never  been  tried, 
and  the  officers  of  the  union  cannot  find  out  the  reason  why. 
Sometimes  factory  inspectors  "strain  at  a  gnat  and  swallow  a 
camel."  A  poor  organ-grinder  in  one  of  our  cities  was  fined 
twenty-five  dollars  and  costs  for  employing  a  boy  not  thirteen 
years  of  age  to  help  him ;  in  the  same  city  a  factory,  wherein  nine 
hundred  persons  labor,  has  from  fifty  to  sixty  children  employed 
contrary  to  law,  but  this  transgressor  has  not  been  prosecuted. 
Another  storekeeper  was  prosecuted  for  employing  a  girl  under 
thirteen  years  of  age,  and  in  the  same  city  scores  of  girls  are 
employed  under  that  age,  and  nothing  is  done  about  it.  The 
heads  of  large  factories  are  invariably  a  power  in  the  politics  of 
the  town  or  city  wherein  they  reside,  and  the  factory  inspectors 
are  appointees  of  the  "machine." 

Many  employers   and  parents,   by  deception,   defeat  the   in- 
spector's purpose.    In  a  large  firm  employing  over  seven  hundred 


CHILD   LABOR  155 

persons,  who  were  scattered  over  the  four  floors  of  the  massive 
building,  it  was  affirmed  that  the  smaller  boys  were  sent  from 
one  floor  to  the  other  when  the  officer  made  his  inspection.  In  a 
silk  factory  employing  about  two  hundred  hands,  a  few  boys 
were  stowed  away  when  the  inspector  made  his  visit.  The  officer 
was  informed  of  this,  and  ofi  the  following  day  he  returned  to 
the  factory  and  discharged  the  boys.  Employers  generally  de- 
mand certificates  from  children  under  sixteen  years  of  age,  and 
most  children  employed  under  thirteen  years  enter  "the  factory  or 
mill  because  their  parents  swear  falsely  in  order  to  get  the  "per- 
mit." Factory  Inspector  Leiserring  said  that  ninety  per  cent,  of 
the  parents  who  send  their  children  to  factories  and  mills  will 
perjure  themselves  in  order  to  get  their  children  to  work  at  an 
early  age.  Each  inspector  whom  I  interviewed  cited  instances 
where  parents  had  two  children  working,  with  certificates  show- 
ing only  four  or  five  months  difference  in  their  ages!  One  child, 
of  proper  age,  would  secure  a  certificate  and  give  it  to  a  younger 
brother  or  sister.  In  Allentown,  South  Bethlehem,  Norristown, 
etc.,  a  large  foreign-born  population  is  found.  The  sons  and 
daughters  of  these  Slavs  and  Italians  go  to  the  factories  and 
mills,  and  both  the  public  school  authorities  and  the  factory 
inspectors  confess  that  they  are  unable  to  check  the  greed  of 
these  parents.  The  test  required  by  law,  that  children  under  six- 
teen years  of  age  must  know  how  to  read  and  write  the  English 
language  intelligently,  is  not  rigidly  applied. 

Some  employers  transgress  the  factory  laws  of  the  State  in 
working  children  under  sixteen  years  of  age  and  adult  females 
more  than  sixty  hours  a  week.  The  chief  transgressors  in  this 
respect  are  the  silk  and  hosiery  mills,  the  cigar,  school  slates, 
box,  and  umbrella  factories.  These  industries  have  their  busy 
seasons,  during  which  the  employees  work  overtime.  In  one 
factory  little  girls  were  kept  working  from  one  o'clock  till  eight 
without  respite — a  continuous  stretch  of  seven  hours.  Sometimes 
one  department  in  a  large  factory  falls  behind  the  others,  and 
the  employer  offers  a  premium  to  the  employees  to  "catch  up." 
Under  this  pressure  I  saw  boys  under  fifteen  years  of  age  work- 
ing fourteen  hours  a  day.  The  mother  of  three  young  girls  who 
worked  overtime  said,  "It's  from  bed  to  work  and  from  work  to 


156  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

bed."  These  children  got  up  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and 
worked  till  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening.  When  questioned  about 
the  time  they  had  for  the  noonday  meal  and  how  they  used  it, 
one  of  the  girls  said,  "I  take  a  nap  when  I  can  on  the  bales." 
Can  any  one  say  what  thirteen  or  fourteen  hours  a  day  means  to 
these  young  boys  and  girls?  In  my  investigation  I  saw  two  or 
three  of  the  wrecks.  One  young  girl  in  her  seventeenth  year  had 
been  earning  nine  dollars  and  ten  dollars  a  week,  working  from 
seventy  to  seventy-five  hours.  She  had  done  it  for  three  years, 
and  is  now  broken,  in  health  and  spirits.  Another  girl,  eighteen 
years  of  age,  having  worked  for  six  years  in  a  silk-mill,  said.  "I 
used  to  be  stout  and  strong,  but  now  I'm  poor  enough."  Dr. 
Weaver,  of  Easton,  who  has  for  the  last  ten  years  practiced 
among  the  operatives  of  a  hosiery-mill  which  employs  some 
twelve  hundred  hands,  said:  "Girls,  when  they  have  been  in  that 
mill  from  twelve  years  of  age  to  twenty,  are  not  much  good 
after."  Upon  girls  of  tender  years  the  blight  of  factory  life  falls 
heaviest.  The  boy  may  be  stunted  or  he  may  grow  dispropor- 
tionately, but  the  effect  upon  the  more  delicate  organism  of  the 
female  is  disastrous  and  cruel.  Sixty  hours  a  week  is  more  than 
the  average  child  of  tender  years  can  stand,  but  add  another 
ten  hours  overtime  and  the  pressure  works  disastrously.  Dr. 
Samuel  Davies,  President  of  the  State  Board  of  Health  of 
Pennsylvania,  said:  "Factory  girls  soon  wilt,  and  they  ill  dis- 
charge  the    functions    of    maternity."     Is   it    surprising? 

Another  wrong  to  tender  boys  and  girls  employed  in  silk-mills 
is  night  work.  This  is  confined  to  silk  plants  installed  in  the 
anthracite  coal  fields.  In  Allentown,  Reading,  South  Bethlehem, 
Lancaster,  etc.,  children  do  not  work  nights,  for  employers  cannot 
get  children  enough  to  operate  their  plants  in  the  day.  Mr.  Car- 
diff, manager  of  a  silk-throwing  plant  in  South  Bethlehem,  said 
"The  coal  fields  is  the  ideal  place  for  a  silk-throwing  plant;  you 
get  cheap  rent,  cheap  coal,  cheap  labor,  and  the  parents  don't 
object  to  have  their  children  work  nights." 

Not  in  any  other  industrial  center  in  eastern  Pennsylvania 
are  young  girls  employed  in  night  work.  Ten  or  fifteen  years 
ago  night  work  for  girls  was  unknown  in  this  State.  The  evil 
arose    when    the    silk-throwing   plants    were    built    in    anthracite 


CHILD   LABOR  i57 

communities;  and  as  these  enterprises  multiply,  the  number  ot 
tender  children  employed  at  night  increases.  A  plant  in  Di'ckson 
City,  employing  some  three  hundred  hands,  draws  its  labor 
supply  from  a  radius  of  two  miles,  and  young  girls  not  sixteen 
years  of  age  work  twelve  hours  for  five  nights  in  the  week. 
When  an  employer  was  asked,  "Do  they  work  as  well  by  night 
as  by  day?"  he  answered,  "No.  They  don't  sleep  in  the  day,  and 
when  midnight  comes  they  get  drowsy  and  the  waste  is  larger." 
I  saw  little  girls  going  to  and  fro  before  scores  of  revolving 
spindles,  having  their  short  dresses  tied  with  a  cord  to  keep 
them  from  being  entangled  in  the  machinery  as  they  stretched 
on  tiptoe  to  catch  the  broken  thread.  And  these  little  girls  in 
short  dresses,  standing  before  these  whirlers — some  of  them 
making  twenty-hve  thousand  revolutions  a  minute — from  6  p.  m. 
to  6  a.  m.,  get  drowsy.  It  means  more  waste — the  waste  of 
nerve  and  tissue  of  future  mothers  in  the  commonwealth  of 
Pennsylvania.  In  another  factory  some  little  boys  watching 
the  spindles  kept  a  box  near  by,  for  they  could  not  well  catch 
the  broken  thread  unless  they  had  something  to  stand  on.  The 
Empire  Silk  Mill  of  Wilkesbarre  discontinued  night  work  for 
girls,  and  a  man  living  in  close  proximity  to  the  mill  gave 
the  reason:  ''We  couldn't  sleep.  The  girls  came  out  at  midnight, 
walked  the  streets,  shouted,  screamed,  jumped  on  our  porches, 
etc.  It  was  terrible.  What  mischief  one  would  not  think  of 
doing  another  would.  So  we  protested,  and  the  manager  dis- 
continued night  work,"  That  was  in  a  city,  but  there  are  twenty 
silk-throwing  commission  houses  in  small  mining  towns  of 
from  four  thousand  to  twelve  thousand  population  where  girl 
employees  can  run  during  the  midnight  meal  hour  without 
disturbing  the  rest  of  those  living  in  these  thinly  populated 
communities.  Behind  it  all  is  the  greed  of  employers.  The 
owner  of  a  small  silk-throwing  plant  said,  "By  working  day 
and  night  I  get  my  money  for  three  per  cent."  Another  man- 
ager, who  recently  transferred  his  plant  from  Paterson  to  a 
mining  village,  said  'T  save  from  sixty  to  seventy  per  cent, 
in  wages  by  coming  here."  I  asked,  "Have  you  a  sufficient 
supply  of  labor?"  He  answered,  "Twice  as  much  as  I  need." 
Under  these  conditions  is  it  likely  that  humane  considerations 


158  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

will   deter  these   men  from   working  this   cheap   labor  day   and 
night? 

Before  the  silk  manufacturers  transferred  their  plants  to  these 
mining  towns  there  was  little  work  here  for  girls  to  do.  Their 
coming  has  been  a  material  aid  to  our  people,  and  no  one  can 
gainsay  the  benefit  conferred  by  them  upon  many  communities 
in  their  struggle  for  subsistence.  Males  only  are  employed  in  the 
mining  industry.  Mine  employees,  as  a  rule,  have  large  families, 
and  the  increase  to  the  family  income  from  the  wages  of  girls 
working  in  factories  and  mills  is  needed  and  is  put  to  good  pur- 
pose in  most  homes.  No  intelligent  person  will  protest  against 
a  diversity  of  industries  entering  into  our  towns.  Each  one  of 
our  boroughs  offers  inducements  to  manufacturers  to  come  with- 
in its  borders.  Employment  to  girls  of  sixteen  years  and  over  is 
a  physical  and  moral  good.  But  what  is  argued  for  is  that  boys 
and  girls  from  ten  to  fourteen  years  should  not  be  agents  of 
production;  that  it  is  a  crime  to  work  them  seventy  and  seventy- 
five  hours  a  week ;  and  that  a  law  should  be  passed  in  the 
next  session  of  our  Legislature  making  it  a  crime  to  employ  any 
boy  tinder  sixteen  years  and  any  girl  under  eighteen  years 
between  7  p.  m.  and  6  a.  m.  in  any  industry. 

American  Journal  of  Sociology.  lo:  299-314.  November,  1904. 

Has  Illinois  the  Best  Laws  in  the  Country  for  the  Protection 
of  Children?  Florence  Kelley. 

Is  it  true  that  Illinois  now  has  the  best  laws  in  the  country 
for  the  protection  of  the  children? 

There  are  two  objective  tests  which  can  be  applied  in  seek- 
ing an  answer  to  this  question.  One  test  is  that  which  is 
afforded  by  the  decennial  census  of  the  United  States,  which 
reveals  the  effectiveness  (or  the  incompetence)  with  which  the 
states  are  dealing  with  the  education  of  their  children,  by  re- 
vealing the  numbers  and  the  percentages  of  the  children  be- 
tween the  ages  of  ten  and  fourteen  years,  in  each  of  the  states, 
who  can  read  and  write. 

The  second  test  is  an  annual  one  and  is  applied  locally  by 
each  community  for  itself.  This  is  the  departure  of  the  pupils 


CHILD   LABOR  159 

from  the  schools,  their  age,  and  their  recorded  acquirements  at 
the  moment  of  departure. 

Where  pupils  virtually  all  complete  the  work  of  eight  years 
of  the  curriculum  of  the  public  schools,  the  laws  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  children  are  thereby  shown  to  be  working  ef- 
ficiently. It  is  claimed  by  citizens  of  Colorado  that  this  is  the 
case  in  the  schools  of  Denver.  Where,  however,  the  pupils 
fall  out  of  school  after  finishing  the  work  of  the  first,  second, 
third,  and  fourth  years,  as  appears  to  be  common  in  many 
large  manufacturing  centers,  Chicago  among  the  number  (where 
only  a  minority  of  the  pupils  complete  the  work  of  the  first 
five  years  of  the  public  schools),  there  the  laws  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  children  appear  to  need  further  amendment. 

Let  us  apply  these  two  objective  tests  to  the  laws  of  Illinois. 
It  is  by  no  means  ancient  history  that  between  1890  and  1900 
Illmois  fell  from  the  sixth  to  the  fifteenth  position  in  the  scale 
of  the  states,  when  they  are  graded  according  to  the  ability  of 
their  children  between  the  ages  of  ten  and  fourteen  years  to 
read  and  write.  This  means  that  up  to  the  year  1900  fourteen 
states  had  proceeded  more  effectively  with  the  task  of  abolishing 
illiteracy  than  Illinois.  These  states  are  Nebraska,  Iowa,  Ore- 
gon, Ohio,  Kansas,  Indiana,  Connecticut,  Utah,  Massachusetts, 
Michigan.  Washington,  Minnesota.  Wisconsin  and  New  York. 
In  1910  this  test  will  be  applied  again.  It  will  be  a  matter  of  the 
highest  interest  to  observe  whether  Illinois  will  then  have  re- 
gained the  points  in  the  scale  of  the  states  which  were  lost  in 
1890-1900.  If  the  statement  is  correct  that  the  laws  for  the  pro- 
tection of  her  children  are  the  best  in  the  country,  it  is  reason- 
able to  suppose  that  the  fact  will  then  manifest  itself  in  the 
total  abolition  of  illiteracy  among  children  of  sound  mind  who 
have   been   in  the   country  as  much   as   one   school   year. 

It  may  be  urged  that  the  relative  illiteracy  is  not  a  fair  test 
of  the  excellence  of  the  laws  for  the  protection  of  children;  for 
the  agricultural  states  of  the  Northwest,  having  neither  vast 
foreign  immigration  nor  highly  developed  manufacture  and 
commerce,  are  confronted  by  no  such  task  as  the  education  of 
the  immigrant  children  who  flood  Chicago  and  are  tempted 
to  remain  illiterate  by  reason  of  the  opportunities  for  employ- 


i6o  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

ment  for  all  comers.  Granting,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that 
the  task  of  Washington,  or  of  Nebraska,  may  be  lighter  than 
that  of  Illinois,  what  is  to  be  said  of  the  present  relation  of 
Illinois  to  New  York?  Why  should  New  York  stand  higher 
in  the  percentage  scale  than  Illinois?  Why  should  it  have,  in 
fact,  only  704  more  illiterate  children  between  the  ages  of  ten 
and  fourteen  years  than  Illinois?  New  York  has  more  immi- 
grants, more  manufacture  more  commerce  of  the  character 
which  absorbs  the  labor  of  children  ;  why  then,  should  it  have 
only  704  more  illiterate  children  between  the  ages  of  ten  and 
fourteen  years  and  stand  higher  in  the  percentage  table  than 
Illinois? 

The  answer  to  this  is  that  its  laws  have  long  been,  and  still 
are,  better  than  those  of  Illinois  in  one  important  particular; 
namely,  the  requirement  that  children  under  the  age  of  sixteen 
years  must  be  able  to  read  and  write  English  before  they  begin 
to  work  in  manufacture.  This  law  has  been  in  force  since  1892. 
For  twelve  years,  therefore,  the  schools  of  New  York  city  have 
been  flooded  with  pupils  between  the  ages  of  six  and  sixteen 
years,  eager  to  learn  to  read  and  write  English  in  order  to  be 
able  to  go  to  work.  And  the  results  are  visible  in  the  decen- 
nial  census   of   1900. 

The  second  test — the  departure  of  the  pupils  from  the 
schools  and  their  recorded  acquirement  at  the  moment  of  de- 
parture—can be  applied  at  any  moment  in  any  city,  by  a 
scrutiny  of  the  rolls  of  the  different  classes  in  the  public  schools. 

Colorado  requires  the  completion  of  the  work  of  the  first 
eight  years  of  the  public  schools,  or  an  equivalent  in  work  done 
in  other  schools  or  at  home.  The  pupils  must  be  ready  to  enter 
the  high  schools.  An  examination  of  the  rolls,  showing  the 
age  and  the  class  reached  by  all  the  pupils  at  the  time  of  leaving 
school,  would  settle  the  question  of  school  attendance  between 
Colorado  and  Illinois.  It  is  much  to  be  wished  that  such  an 
examination  might  be  made  in  both  states,  but  especially  in 
Chicago. 

jSIeanwhile  it  is  obvious  that  that  statute  which  requires  them 
to  complete  the  whole  work  of  the  first  eight  years  of  the 
schools  affords  better  protection  to  the  children  than  that  which. 


CHILD    LABOR  i6i 

like  the  statutes  of  Illinois,  merely  requires  pupils  to  attend 
school  until  they  reach  the  age  of  fourteen  years,  regardless  of 
what  they  learn  or  fail  to  learn,  and  supplements  this  per- 
functory attendance  by  the  demand  that  such  as  have  not 
learned  to  read  and  write  must  thereafter  attend  a  night  school. 
Reading  fluently  and  writing  legibly  are  very  elastic  terms. 
Childrens  are  sometimes  described  as  able  to  read  fluently 
when  they  can  repeat  in  parrot  fashion  a  few  lines  of  the  first 
reader.  It  is  related  that,  after  a  change  of  administration  in 
New  York  city,  the  reader  used  for  testing  children  who  came 
to  get  their  "working  papers"  was  changed  by  the  examiner  at 
the  office  of  the  board  of  health,  and  many  children  failed 
during  the  next  week  because  they  had  been  taught  by  their 
older  brothers  and  sisters  to  read  just  that  portion  of  the  pre- 
vious reader  which  had  been  used  for  years  as  the  test  for  all 
comers.  In  Chicago  the  writer  has  known  many  pupils  who 
dropped  out  of  the  third-year  class  in  the  schools,  nominally 
able  to  read,  but  so  little  habituated  to  reading  that  after  two 
or  three  years  they  had  wholly  lost  the  art. 

New  York,  while  requiring  a  smaller  amount  of  completed 
school  work  than  Colorado,  goes  much  farther  in  this  direction 
than  Illinois;  for  New  York  requires  that,  before  leaving 
school,  pupils  shall  have  had,  since  the  thirteenth  birthday, 
130  days'  attendance  in  school,  in  which  they  must  have  received 
instruction  in  ''reading,  writing,  geography,  English  grammar, 
and  the  fundamental  principles  of  arithmetic  up  to  and  includ- 
ing fractions."  This  is  the  w^ork  which  a  child  would  normally 
complete  who  entered  school  at  the  age  of  six  years  and 
was  regularly  promoted  to  the  age  of  twelve  years.  The 
statute  having  taken  effect  in  1903,  it  appears  that  the  number 
of  pupils  is  very  large  who  have  spent  the  years  in  school,  but 
have  not  completed  the  required  work  and  achieved  the  required 
promotions. 

Excellent  as  is  the  effect  of  the  statutory  requirement  of 
specified  school  work  to  be  completed  before  the  child  leaves 
school,  in  stimulating  efforts  of  teachers,  superintendents,  and 
members  of  the  board  of  education,  it  is  perhaps  more  far-reach- 


i62  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

ing  in  its  influence  upon  parents  of  pupils  who  are  to  be  wage- 
earners,  inducing  them  to  keep  the  children  in  school  with 
greater  regularity  than  ever  before,  in  order  that  they  may  not 
miss  the  required  promotions  and  thus  be  detained  in  school 
after  the  fourteenth  birthday.  The  laws  of  Colorado  and  New 
York  by  this  means  place  a  premium  upon  regularity  in  attend- 
ing school  from  the  day  of  entrance  at  the  age  of  six  years, 
saying  virtually  to  the  parent:  "Your  child  must  go  to  school 
until  the  sixteenth  birthday.  If,  however,  you  keep  him  up  to 
his  work  so  well  that  he  completes  a  certain  portion  of  the 
curriculum  by  the  time  the  fourteenth  birthday  arrives,  he  may 
then  leave  school  and  begin  to  work."  Both  states  enforce  fines 
and  imprisonment  upon  parents  who  disobey  the  compulsory- 
attendance  law.  The  parent  is  thus  treated  in  both  these 
states  according  to  the  methods  of  the  best  modern  pedagogy — 
the  reward  of  virtue  and  the  penalty  of  evil-doing  following 
rationally  upon  the  line  of  conduct  selected  by  the  parent. 

Illinois,  on  the  other  hand,  ends  the  term  of  compulsory 
schoqj  attendance  at  the  age  of  fourteen  years  for  all  who  can 
read  and  write,  and  requires  beyond  that  merely  attendance 
at  night  school.  Thus,  although  parents  are  punished  by  fine 
or  imprisonment  if  pupils  play  truant,  exactly  as  in  New  York 
and  Colorado,  they  have  none  of  the  stimulus,  such  as  fathers 
in  those  states  enjoy,  for  getting  the  pupils  forward  through  a 
required  amount  of  school  work.  While  Illinois  punished  three 
hundred  parents  in  one  year  for  the  truancy  of  their  children. 
New  York  and  Colorado  (while  they,  too,  punished  parents 
of  truants)  were  stimulating  thousands  of  fathers,  mothers 
and  children  to  regular  school  attendance  on  the  part  of  the 
children  in  order  that  these  might  complete  the  allotted  task 
by  the  arrival   of  the  fourteenth  birthday. 

One  of  the  proverbial  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  perfect 
enforcement  of  child-labor  and  compulsory-education  laws  is 
that  of  proving  the  age  of  the  child  which  is  alleged  to  be 
fourteen  or  sixteen  years  old,  and  therefore  exempt  from 
further  school  requirements  or  restrictions  upon  its  work, 
while  in  truth  the  child  may  be  but  eleven  or  twelve  years  old. 


CHILD   LABOR  163 

The  demand  that  the  child  must,  in  addition  to  being  fourteen 
years  old,  have  completed  a  certain  amount  of  school  work 
is  found,  in  practice,  to  strengthen  the  age  restriction  of  the 
child  labor  law  very  effectively.  Of  what  use  is  it  for  a  parent 
to  swear  falsely  that  a  lad  is  fourteen  years  of  age  when  he 
is  eleven,  if  he  must  continue  in  school  until  he  has  finished 
the  work  of  the  first  five  years,  or  the  first  eight  years?  The 
temptation  to  perjury  on  the  part  of  parents  is  thus  reduced, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  borrowing  of  passports  and  other  records. 

New  York  state,  however  reinforces  the  age  requirement 
of  the  child-labor  law  still  further  by  having  every  child  ex- 
amined by  a  physician  of  the  local  board  of  health,  who  signs  and 
files  in  the  office  of  the  board  a  statement  that  the  child  is, 
in  his  opinion,  of  the  normal  stature  of  a  child  of  fourteen 
years,  and  is  in  good  health.  This  is  an  excellent  safeguard 
for  the  undersized,  anemic  children  who  are  clever  and  faith- 
ful enough  to  finish  the  work  of  the  first  five  years  of  the 
curriculum  in  five  or  in  six  years,  and  whose  greedy  parents 
would  gladly  turn  the  achievement  to  account,  not  by  giving 
the  child  the  due  reward  of  its  faithfulness  in  the  shape  of 
more  opportunity  for  school  life,  but  by  crowding  it  into  a 
sweatshop  or  the  messenger  service. 

When  thus  tested  by  the  two  available  objective  tests — the 
decennial  census  and  the  departure  of  the  children  from  school, 
considered  in  connection  with  the  age  af  which  they  are 
permitted  to  go  and  the  acquirement  required  at  the  time  of 
leaving — Illinois  appears  not  to  have  the  best  laws  in  the 
country  for  the  protection  of  the  children.  There  are,  however, 
some  further  comparisons  which  can  profitably  be  made. 

A  law  which  far  excels  any  in  force  at  the  present  time 
in  its  effective  defence  of  the  interests  of  childhood  is  the 
unique  statute  of  Colorado  which  defines  the  delinquencies 
with  which  a  child  under  the  age  of  sixteen  years  may  be 
charged,  and  holds  the  parent,  guardian,  or  other  adult  person 
responsible  who  contributes  to  the  delinquency  of  a  child. 

Excellent  as  is  the  truancy  law  of  Illinois,  it  is  limited  in 
its  operation  to  the  seasons  when  the  schools   are  in   session. 


i64  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

But  the  delinquencies  of  children  know  no  such  limitations. 
Boys  commit  petty  offenses  out  of  school  hours,  on  Saturdays, 
Sundays,  and  during  vacation.  Moreover,  the  compulsory- 
education  law  of  Illinois  ceases  to  take  effect  upon  a  child 
when  he  reaches  the  fourteenth  birthday,  unless,  being  illiterate, 
he  may  be  required  to  attend  a  night  school  until  he  has 
either  learned  to  read  and  write,  or  reaches  the  age  of  sixteen 
years.  If  a  boy  in  Chicago  buys  cigarettes  wherewith  to 
stupefy  himself  and  render  his  school  attendance  useless,  the 
truancy  law  is  of  little  value  to  him.  If  he  spends  the  hours 
after  school  in  picking  coal  from  a  railroad  track,  at.  the  risk 
of  his  life,,  it  is  not  the  truancy  law  which  meets  his  case. 
What  such  boys  need  is  the  protection  of  a  law  which  would 
bring  into  court  the  mother  and  the  cigarette  dealer,  in  the 
case  of  the  former;  and  the  railway  officials  who  fail  to 
police  their  tracks,  together  with  the  family  who  profit  by 
the  child's  thefts,  in  the  case  of  the  latter. 

The  law  of  Colorado  holds  responsible,  for  all  the  delinquen- 
cies of  all  the  children  until  they  reach  the  age  of  sixteen 
years,  all  those  adult  persons  who  contribute  to  such  delinquen- 
cies. If  a  boy  fetches  beer  for  the  family,  the  man  who  sells  him 
the  beer  and  the  family  who  send  him  to  fetch  it  are  alike 
held  responsible.  If  a  boy  carries  telegrams  to  a  disreputable 
house,  the  operator  who  sends  him  is  liable  to  a  fine  or  to 
jail  for  £i  year.  'The  boy  who  steals  rides  on  a  coal  train 
involves  the  conductor  in  his  delinquency;  and  the  junk 
dealers  find  it  unprofitable  to  purchase  junk  from  children 
whose  detection  involves  a  year  in  jail  for  the  adult  partici- 
pant in  their  offenses. 

The  child  in  Colorado  thus  has  the  fullest  benefit  of  a 
rigid  compulsory-education  law,  and  also  of  this  wide-embrac- 
ing inforcement  of  adult  responsibility.  Colorado  goes  beyond 
the  enforcement  of  parental  responsibility,  and  includes  with 
it  adult  responsibility.  Whoever  contributes  to  the  delinquency 
of  a  child  is  responsible  before  the  law  of  Colorado. 

The  statutes  of  Illinois  possess  several  points  of  unques- 
tioned   excellence,    none    of    which    are,    however,    peculiar    to 


CHILD   LABOR  165 

themselves.  One  of  the  best  requirements  is  that  children 
shall  not  work  after  7  o'clock  at  night.  This  is  excelled  by 
the  Michigan  statute  which  prohibits  the  employment  of  chil- 
dren after  6  P.  M.  Another  ©xcelient  point  is  the  legal  limit 
of  eight  hours  imposed  upon  the  working  day  of  children 
under  the  age  of  sixteen  years.  This  provision,  however,  is 
found  in  the  laws  of  Colorado,  Arizona,  Montana,  and  Utah, 
as  well  as  in  those  of  Illinois.  An  admirable  provision  in  the 
laws  of  Illinois  is  that  which  prohibits  the  employment  of 
children  in  occupations  dangerous  to  the  health.  This  also 
is  common  to  the  laws  of  Massachusetts,  Ohio,  Colorado, 
and  several  other  states. 

Among  the  most  important  laws  for  the  protection  of  chil- 
dren are  those  which  deal  with  child-labor.  No  form  of  child- 
labor  is  more  injurious  than  the  street  occupations.  In  five  years 
of  residence  in  New  York  city  the  writer  has  not  seen  one  girl 
under  the  age  of  sixteen  years  engaged  in  selling  papers,  or 
any  other  articles,  upon  the  streets,  or  in  begging.  Can  as 
much  be  said  for  Chicago? 

This  absence  of  girls  from  the  street  trades  is  due  to  the 
very  rigid  provision  in  the  penal  code  holding  parents  and 
guardians  responsible  for  girls,  and  guilty  of  cruelty  when 
they  are  permitted  thus  to  work  under  the  age  of  sixteen 
years.  Under  the  statute  of  1903,  newsboys  under  the  age  of 
fourteen  years  are  required  to  wear  badges  loaned  to  them  by 
the  board  of  education  of  New  York  city.  They  must  not  work 
under  the  age  of  ten  years,  or  during  school  hours,  or  after 
10  o'clock  at  night.  They  must  be  able  to  read  and  write. 
They  receive  their  badges  (gratis)  in  connection  with  licenses, 
for  which  the  parents  must  apply  with  the  children,  and  for 
the  children's  compliance  with  which  the  adults  are  held 
responsible.  A  similar  law  of  Massachusetts  is  in  force  in 
Boston.    Have  the  laws  of  Illinois  any  such  provisions? 

There  is  no  good  measure  for  the  protection  of  children  in 
laws  of  Illinois  is  that  which  prohibits  the  employment  of 
other  states  also.  But  there  are  several  excellent  provisions 
missing  frotn  the  Illinois  laws  which  could  be  embodied  in 
them  with   immense  advantage  to  the  children  of  Illinois, 


i66  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

To  recapitulate  briefly:  It  appears  that  the  laws  of  Illinois 
for  the  protection  of  children  are  excelled  by  those  of  twenty 
states,  which  require  their  children  to  attend  school  to  the  age 
of  fifteen  or  sixteen  years,  while  Illinois  permits  all  who  can 
read  and  write  to  leave  school  at  the  age  of  fourteen  years, 
merely  demanding  attendance  at  night  school  of  those  between 
fourteen  and  sixteen  years  who  have  not  yet  learned  to  read 
and  write.  They  are  excelled  by  those  of  two  states  (Colorado 
and  New  York)  which  require  pupils  both  to  reach  the  age 
of  fourteen  years  and  also  to  complete  a  certain  amount  'of 
school  work  before  leaving  school.  They  are  excelled  by  those 
of  New  York  in  numerous  respects,  among  which  one  •  is  the 
requirement  that  children  before  beginning  work  shall  be  de- 
clared by  a  physician  of  the  local  board  of  health  to  be  of  normal 
stature  of  a  child  of  fourteen  years  and  in  good  health;  and 
another  is  that  requirement,  which  has  been  on  the  statute 
books  of  New  York  since  1893,  that  children,  before  beginning 
work,  be  able  to  read  and  write. 

The  number  of  children  at  work  in  Illinois  grows  by  leaps 
and  bounds.  The  demand  for  children's  work  presses  un- 
ceasingly as  the  improvement  of  machinery  renders  the 
children  available  and  the  increasing  immigration  furnishes 
them  by  thousands  to  meet  the  demand.  To  pause  in  the 
process  of  improving  the  laws  for  the  protection  of  the  chil- 
dren means  the  growth  of  illiteracy  and  child-labor.  To  gain 
upon  these  evils,  new  and  progressive  measures  must  be 
adopted  year  after  year,  as  rapidly  as  public  opinion  can  be 
educated.  To  be  satisfied  with  less  than  the  best  would  be 
unworthy  of  the  third  greatest  state  and  the  second  city  in 
the  republic. 

If,  however,  Illinois  is  to  rise  again  from  the  fifteenth  to 
the  lost  sixth  place  in  the  scale  of  the  states,  as  shown  in 
the  census  of  1890-1900;  and,  still  more  if  Illinois  is  to 
acquire  that  which  she  has  never  yet  possessed,  namely,  standing 
in  the  front  rank  of  the  states  which  take  enlightened  care 
of  their  children,  it  will  be  necessary  to  avoid  all  vainglorious 
boasting  and  face  the  facts  as  they  are,  realizing  that  a  large 


CHILD   LABOR  167 

task  awaits  the  legislature.  For  it  will  be  necessary  to  enact 
comprehensive  measures,  covering  the  following  twelve  im- 
portant points: 

1.  A  required  amount  of  the  work  in  the  curriculum  of  the 
public  schools  to  be  covered  by  all  the  children,  either  in  the 
public  schools  or  in  private  schools,  or  in  some  other  manner 
(in  institutions  or  at  home),  preferably  the  work  of  the  first 
eight  years,  as  in  Colorado. 

2.  Required  school  attendance  to  the  age  of  sixteen  years, 
except  for  children  exempted  after  compliance  with  the  fore- 
going  school    requirement. 

3.  A  physician's  examination  of  all  the  children  at  the 
time  of  beginning  work,  and  the  filing  of  a  signed  statement 
of  a  physician  of  the  local  board  of  health  that  at  the  time 
of  the  examination  the  child  is  of  the  normal  stature  of  a 
child  of  fourteen  years  and  in  good  health. 

4.  School  physicians,  with  powers  much  enlarged  beyond 
those  of  the  present  medical  visitors  of  the  Chicago  schools. 

5.  School    nurses    provided    by   the    local    board    of    health. 

6.  Special  classes  in  the  schools  on  a  large  scale,  not  only 
for  the  deaf  and  crippled  as  now,  but  for  all  the  recently  im- 
migrated children  over  the  age  of  ten  years,  and  for  the 
pupils  who  are  subnormal,  but  not  idiotic. 

7.  Play  centers  under  the  charge  of  the  local  board  of 
education. 

8.  Branch  libraries  in  the  public  school,  to  reinforce  the 
school  work  in  the  English  language. 

9.  Regulation  of  the  street  occupations  for  children  under 
the  age  of  sixteen  years,  prohibiting  the  employment  of  girls. 

10.  The  Pennsylvania  prohibition  of  the  employment  of 
boys  under  the  age  of  sixteen  years  underground  in  mines. 

11.  The  Colorado  law  enforcing  adult  responsibility  for 
the  delinquency  of  children  under  the  age  of  sixteen  years'. 

12.  The  admission  to  the  electorate  of  the  womeh  of  the 
state,  in  order  that  the  mothers,  the  teachers,  and  the  rest  of 
the  women  interested  in  children  may  help  with  the  enactment 
and  the  enforcement   of   laws  for   the  welfare   of  the   children. 


i68  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

Annals   of   the  American   Academy.   25:   459-66.   May,    1905. 
Test  of  Effective   Child-Labor  Legislation.     Owen  R.   Lovejoy. 

Effective  legislation  may  be  tested  by  either  of  two  stand- 
ards: the  ideal  or  the  practical.  It  is  not  ideally  effective  un- 
less it  adequately  protects  childhood  from  the  various  forces 
which  either  blindly  or  selfishly  prey  upon  its  birthrights. 
The  proprietor  of  a  large  glass-blowing  establishment  recently 
stated  with  frankness  the  adaptability  of  children  to  this  busi- 
ness and  naively  added:  '"The  work  takes  a  little  fellow  that's 
nimble  and  can  handle  himself."  As  long  as  we  perrnit  this 
industry  or  any  other  to  take  "the  little  fellow"  for  its  own 
interest,  regardless  of  his  higher  value  to  himself  and  to  society, 
we  are  far  from  applying  this  standard  of  effectiveness.  Hold- 
ing this  as  the  ultimate  aim  we  must  approach  it  practically. 

From  this  second  viewpoint  legislation  is  effective  if  it 
carries  within  itself  the  possibility  of  enforcement,  however 
low  or  high  its  standard  may  be.  It  is  sometimes  supposed 
that  low  standards  as  to  age,  physical  fitness,  educational  effi- 
ciency, and  laxness  as  to  the  number  of  hours  children  may 
be  employed,  are  standards  that  can  be  maintained  without 
difficulty.  Investigation  proves,  however,  that  the  tendency  to 
transgress  is  stronger  against  low  than  against  high  standards. 
In  Rhode  Island,  where  a  twelve  year  age  limit  is  legal  for 
work  in  the  mills,  and  school  children  of  twelve  may  be  granted 
a  certificate  to  labor  upon  the  recommendation  of  the  over- 
seer of  the  poor,  it  would  seem  that  a  standard  so  low  would 
invite  universal  obedience.  On  the  other  hand  it  is  found  that 
there  are  townships  in  which  no  effort  is  made  to  enforce  even 
this  minimum  requirement,  and  children  ten  and  eleven  years 
of  age  are  found  in  the  mills,  while  of  the  twelve  year  old 
children  only  a  few  appear  ever  to  have  heard  of  such  an  article 
as  an  age  or  schooling  certificate.  In  Pennsylvania,  where  the 
only  educational  test  is  of  the  ability  to  read  and  write  simple 
sentences  in  the  English  language,  many  communities  are  to 
be  found  in  which  numbers  of  entirely  illiterate  children  are 
employed,   the  intellectual  standard   being  so   low   as   to  invite 


CHILD   LABOR  169 

a  contemptuous  indifference  to  it  by  those  authorized  to  apply 
its  provisions. 

Legislation,  to  be  effective,  must  express  the  collective  will 
of  the  people.  I  might  call  it  the  "composite"  will  of  the 
people,  for  it  must  be  neither  the  idealistic  opinion  of  the  re- 
former, nor  the  opinion  of  a  self-centered  commercialism.  In 
these  days  of  betrayed  legislation  it  is  difficult  to  determine 
whether  the  statute  laws  are  really  the  voice  of  the  people. 
If  they  are,  and  still  are  hopelessly  inadequate  for  the  pro- 
tection of  childhood  it  is  useless  to  immediately  attempt  ad- 
vanced legislation.  The  only  remedy  is  to  enlighten  and  edu- 
cate public  opinion  to  a  proper  appreciation  of  child  values. 
But  if  the  legislation  is  found  to  be  lower  than  the  plane  of 
pubHc  opinion,  then  it  must  be  changed  in  conformity  with 
that  opinion  and  w'ith  certain  well-defined  principles, 

A  comparison  of  two  townships  in  the  same  state,  under  the 
same  laws,  showed  that  while  in  one  township  the  law  was 
almost  entirely  ignored  and  children  were  sacrificed  by  a  corn- 
bination  of  parental  ignorance  and  industrial  greed,  in  the  other 
township  both  parents  and  employers  joined  with  the  school 
authorities  in  maintaining  a  standard  quite  above  the  legal 
requirements  and,  although  the  age  limit  for  factories  is  twelve 
years,  and  the  maximum  age  for  compulsory  school  attendance 
is  thirteen,  with  special  exceptions  for  a  lower  age,  the  chil- 
dren of  the  community  regarded  fourteen  years  as  the  minimum 
age  to  leave  school  and  enter  the  factory,  and  but  few  children 
under  that  age  were  to  be  found  in  the  several  large  textile 
mills  of  the  township. 

A  few  of  the  principles  to  be  recognized  in  testing  legisla- 
tion are  the  following: 

I.  Legislation  regulating  child  labor  must  harmonize  with 
other  legislation  affecting  the  same  class  in  society.  The  aim 
is  not  just  to  keep  the  children  from  working,  but  to  produce 
intelligent  citizens.  To  this  end  we  must  legislate  in  harmony 
with  the  school  laws.  The  school  law  is  as  much  a  matter  of 
concern  as  a  child  labor  law  itself.  It  is  child  legislation  we 
are    seeking.    An    effective    statute    will    then    provide    authority 


170  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

for  the  investigation  of  all  children  within  the  limits  of  school 
age.  Because  of  loose  construction  the  duty  of  the  truant 
officer  is  often  interpreted  as  limited  to  the  investigation  oi 
truancy  on  the  part  of  children  already  on  the  school  roll. 
This  leaves  an  enormous  body  of  children  unaccounted  for. 
The  superintendent  of  schools  in  one  Rhode  Island  township 
affirms  that  there  are  in  that  township  1.168  children  of  school 
age  of  whom  there  is  absolutely  no  official  record  and  no  way 
of  accounting  for  them,  while  the  Pennsylvania  Child  Labor 
Committee  is  responsible  for  the  statement  that  "in  Philadelphia 
alone  there  are,  after  deducting  those  physically  unable  to  at- 
tend school,  16,100  children  between  the  ages  of  eight  and  thir- 
teen out  of  school,"  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  a  thorough 
investigation  would  prove  similar  conditions  in  other  of  our 
large  cities.  These  armies  of  children  may  be  in  the  factories, 
they  may  be  on  the  street;  they  fall  through  between  the  tru- 
ant officer  and  the  factory  inspector  because  of  this  lack  of 
harmony  and  completeness  in  the  laws.  To  be  effective,  legis- 
lation must  take  account  of  all  the  child  life  in  the  community. 

Also  in  the  educational  requirement  for  labor  the  standard 
should  agree  with  the  school  law.  Because  of  the  influx  of 
foreign  population  the  war  is  beginning  to  wage  hotly  over  the 
English  qualification.  From  the  standpoint  of  American  citi- 
zenship I  think  I  am  right  in  saying  that  the  surest  way  to 
make  a  compulsory  educational  qualification  ineffective  is  to 
substitute  the  words  "any  language"  for  the  words  "English 
language."  as  is  at  the  present  time  seriously  proposed  in  one 
of  our  Northern  States. 

Not  only  should  these  laws  harmonize  in  order  to  be 
effective,  but  there  is  required  the  most  complete  harmony  be- 
tween local  child  labor  committees  and  the  educational  forces, 
or  the  best  legislation  will  fail. 

II.  Effective  legislation  will  be  based  on  industrial,  rather 
than  geographical  boundaries.  Where  the  same  industries  under 
similar  conditions  prevail,  the  difficulty  of  securing  adequate 
legal  protection  in  one  state  is  increased  if  in  a  neighboring 
state  a  lower  standard  is  maintained.  The  fact  is  clearly  proven 


CHILD   LABOR 


i/i 


by  a  field  study  of  the  glass  industry  in  Western  Pennsylvania, 
Eastern  Ohio  and  the  pan-handle  of  West  Virginia.  Ohio  has 
a  fourteen  year  age  limit  for  the  employment  of  children, 
Pennsylvania  a  thirteen  year  limit,  West  Virginia  a  twelve  year 
limit.  Ohio  prohibits  the  employment  of  children  under  sixteen 
at  night,  Pennsylvania  permits  the  employment  at  night  of 
children  of  thirteen,  while  West  Virginia  permits  children 
twelve  years  old  to  work  at  night. 

The  effect  of  such  a  situation  is  that  the  manufacturer  in 
Western  Pennsylvania,  when  approached  on  the  subject  of 
the  restriction  of  night  labor  for  children,  replies  with  a  threat 
to  move  over  into  West  Virginia  if  such  a  law  is  enacted, 
thus  frightening  legislators  into  inactivity,  while  in  Eastern 
Ohio,  along  the  boundary  line,  which  is  thickly  dotted  with  glass 
factories  children  are  confessedly  employed  at  twelve  and 
thirteen  years  of  age  at  night  upon  the  plea  that  the  industry 
cannot  compete  with  West  Virginia  and  Pennslyvania  if  the 
law  were  rigidly  enforced.  The  unity  of  the  entire  ''Pittsburg 
District,"  including  Eastern  Ohio,  Western  Pennsylvania  and 
Northern  West  Virginia,  in  commercial  and  industrial  interests, 
suggests  the  necessity  of  such  legislation  governing  child  labor 
as  shall  recognize  this  similarity  of  conditions,  rather  than 
the  arbitrary  division  of  state  boundaries.  The  present  high 
standard  of  legislation  on  child  labor  cannot  be  made  effective 
or  be  maintained  in  Ohio  unless  West  Virginia  adopts  a 
higher  standard  than  the  present,  and  Pennsylvania  takes  an 
advanced  step  toward  the  restriction  of  night  labor. 

in.  The  law  must  provide  adequate  machinery  and  agencies 
for  its  enforcement.  The  law  regulating  the  employment  of  news- 
boys in  New  York  City  has  failed  through  two  defects  to  estab- 
lish the  purposes  of  these  who  advocated  better  legislation  for 
these  little  street  merchants.  The  standard  is  too  low,  permitting 
boys  of  ten  years  of  age  to  earn  their  livelihood  on  the  streets, 
because  the  public  can  hardly  be  expected  to  take  a  lively 
interest  in  the  enforcement  of  a  law  for  the  protection  of  chil- 
dren nine  years  of  age,  which  offers  no  protection  to  those 
of  ten!    But  where  the  standard  is  highter  the  law  still  fails  at 


172  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

the  point  of  method  of  enforcement.  Un-imiformed  school 
officials  should  be  empowered  to  carry  out  the  provisions  of 
this  statute  and  an  appropriation  sufficient  to  warrant  the 
employment  of  a  large  force  of  such  officers  should  be  readily 
granted.  The  uniformed  policemen,  already  burdened  by  duties 
popularly  regarded  as  more  appropriate  to  the  strength  and 
disposition  of  a  quasi-military  force,  are  hardly  to  be  expected 
to  arrest  ten-year-old  newsboys  and  drag  them  to  the  police 
station  for  the  crime  of  selling  newspapers  under  age.  Even  if 
they  were  so  disposed,  those  of  us  who  remember  the  days  of 
boyhood  are  aware  that  a  small  urchin  can  detect  the  approach 
of  a  stalwart  policeman  at  as  great  a  distance  as  the  policeman 
can  see  the  boy. 

In  states  providing  that  certificates  of  age  and  educational 
attainments  may  be  granted  by  notaries  public  it  has  been  found 
frequently  true  that  such  officials,  having  no  interest  in  the 
matter  beyond  the  collection  of  the  pittance  allowed  for  the 
clerical  work,  h^ve  reduced  the  law  to  a  formality,  issuing 
certificates  to  any  who  applied  regardless  of  the  facts,  and 
cases  are  on  record  in  which  the  notary  was  actually  incompe- 
tent to  determine  whether  the  applicant  was  able  to  read  and 
write  simple  sentences  in  the  English  language. 

The  law  must  also  provide  for  sufficient  tenure  of  office 
and  sufficient  remuneration  for  those  appointed  to  enforce  its 
provisions.  It  need  not  surprise  us  to  find  that  truant  officers 
whose  duties  call  them  to  cover  a  territory  of  thirty  or  forty 
square  miles,  with  a  population  of  above  25,000,  and  who  are 
paid  a  salary  of  $200  a  year,  are  not  uniformly  the  most 
competent  people  in  the  community,  or  those  to  whom  the 
sacred    office    of   monitor   to    childhood    should    be    committed. 

IV.  Legislation  should  definitely  prohibit  not  only  the 
employment  of  young  children  but  their  permission  to  work. 
The  name  of  every  person  working  on  the  premises,  whether 
that  person  is  officially  employed  or  is  simply  "permitted  or 
suffered  to  work,"  should  appear  on  the  roll  of  the  firm  or 
corporation.     Otherwise  factory  inspection  is  a  farce. 

In    states    failing    to    make    this    definite    prohibition    little 


CHILD    LABOR  173 

children,  sometimes  pitifully  young,  have  been  found  in  the 
mills  and  factories  working  as  helpers  of  older  members  of 
the  family.  They  are  not  technically  employed,  the  employer 
has  no  official  knowledge  of  their  presence  in  his  factory, 
they  receive  no  wages  and  are  not  counted  among  the  workers, 
but  the  fruits  of  the  toil  of  these  infants  appear  in  the  wages 
of  the  mother  or  sister,  and  their  little  fingers  are  thus  early 
niade  bread  winners  for  the  family. 

V.  The  responsibility  of  duties  in  respect  to  the  law  must 
be  made  to  rest  upon  the  strongest  members  of  society  rather 
than  upon  the  weakest.  Laws  which  would  otherwise  prove 
effective  are  vitiated  by  the  failure  to  recognize  this  simple 
principle.  The  law  in  Pennsylvania  provides  that  no  child 
under  sixteen  can  be  employed  unless  he  presents  a  certificate 
sworn  to  by  his  parent  that  he  is  thirteen  years  of  age  or  over, 
but  no  proof  is  required  from  the  parent  to  substantiate  the 
affirmation  or  oath.  The  law  thus  construqted  invites  perjury. 
In  many  localities  the  parents  concerned  are  those  whose 
own  experience  is  utterly  devoid  of  knowledge  of  the  value  of 
an  English  education  or  an  American  standard  of  living,  whose 
conception  of  the  value  of  a  child  is  measured  by  his  present 
earning  capacity.  To  issue  an  age  certificate  to  a  child,  based 
on  the  unsupported  oath  of  such  a  parent  is  to  subject  that 
parent  to  a  temptation  which  falls  heaviest  upon  the  weakest 
and  which  increases  in  direct  proportion  to  the  parent's  in- 
capacity to  withstand  it. 

And,  finally,  we  shall  perhaps  best  understand  the  close  rela- 
tion our  problem  bears  to  other  of  our  great  social  problems 
by  a  consideration  of  some  of  the  alleged  reasons  for  employing 
young  children,  and  which  help  to  render  legislation  ineflfective. 
The  excuse  most  frequently  met  is  the  plea  for  the  "poor 
widow"  who  will  be  left  without  support  if  her  little  boy  and 
girl  are  taken  from  the  factory  or  store.  In  every  community 
'^hc  is  found,  and  the  advocates  of  her  cause  are  both  numerous 
and  powerful.  Men  of  commanding  position  in  the  community, 
as  business  men  and  as  philanthropists,  openly  avow  the 
justice  of  the  employment  of  children  of  tender  years,  in  labor 


174  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

that  dwarfs  the  body  and  stifles  intellectual  growth,  because 
the  poor  widow  would  suffer  for  bread  if  they  were  to  be 
emancipated.  The  plea  is  a  plausible  one,  but  the  facts  do  not 
justify  its  claim.  Only  a  small  proportion  of  those  whose  little 
children  are  employed  at  hard  labor  are  ''poor  widows,"  and 
for  these  we  dare  believe  society  can  better  afford  to  make 
adequate  and  honorable  provision,  recognizing  their  service 
to  the  community  in  the  care  of  their  own  young,  rather  than 
that  the  young,  the  only  real  wealth  the  community  can  boast, 
should  be  made  a  meat  offering  to  the  hunger  of  the  parent. 
Let  us  forever  put  to  shame  this  brazen  slave-master  of  child- 
hood which  poses  as  philanthropy  by  showing  that  whatever 
the  sacrifice,  the  children  of  our  generation  shall  not  be  made 
the  means  of  livelihood  to  any  member  of  the  community. 
Let  us  publish  the  revised  version  of  the  offerings  dedicated  to 
our  modern  temple  of  industrial  prosperity,  and  as  we  sit  over 
against  the  treasury  and  see  the  great  and  the  wealthy  cast  in 
their  stocks  and  gold  and  machinery,  let  us  not  fail  to  see  the 
poor  widow  who  comes,  misguided  it  may  be  by  the  industrial 
superstitions  of  her  day,  and  casts  her  two  little  children  into 
the  roaring  temple  of  industry.  As  they  fall,  fall  beyond  re- 
covery, well  may  we  exclaim,  as  did  the  Master  at  that  other 
temple,  "I  tell  you  she  has  cast  in  more  than  they  all,  for 
they  of  their  abundance  have  cast  in,  but  she  of  her  want  hath 
cast  in  all  that  she  had,  even  her  very  life!"  Proper  and 
systematic  methods  of  relief  will  prevent  the  loss  of  a  child's 
future  value  to  society  for  the  sake  of  the  paltry  ninety-three 
cents  a  week,  the  wages  actually  found  to  be  paid  to  young 
children  to-day  in  some  of  our  prosperous  northern  mills.     . 

Another  excuse  is  that  expressed  by  one  glass  manufacturer 
who  affirms  that  he  employs  young  children  partly  for  the 
purpose  of  teaching  them  a  trade.  The  establishment  of  public 
trade  schools  will  take  away  this  excuse  and  will  furnish  a  con- 
structive program  of  the  largest  possibilities.  The  best  way 
to  make  legislation  effective  is  through  the  children  themsdves. 
They  want  to  go  to  work.  They  prefer  the  factory  to  the  school. 
There  is  a  sense  of  personal  independence  in  the  young  child 
who  can  look  upon  himself  as  an  economic  factor  in  the  life 


CHILD   LABOR  175 

of  the  family.  We  must  so  develop  our  educational  system, 
not  through  detention  schools,  not  through  penal  institutions; 
but  through  the  regular  public  channels  of  education,  as  to 
feed  this  practical  instinct  and  cause  the  child  to  feel  that  the 
training  he  receives  is  practical,  that  he  is  really  gaining  that 
which  will  advance  him  materially  faster  than  the  same  time 
spent  in  shop  or  factory.  A  little  boy  met  at  daylight  a  few 
weeks  ago  as  he  came  out  into  the  frosty  morning  from  one 
of  our  New  England  factories,  was  asked  if  he  preferred  the 
factory  to  the  school.  *'Sure,"  was  his  quick  reply;  "de  school 
ain't  no  good;  dey  only  learn  you  to  write  pictures,  dat's  all; 
dat's  all  dey  ever  learnt  me!"  He  was  earning  $1.10  a  week 
for  ten  hours  a  day,  two  days  in  the  week,  and  loafing  the 
other  days.  He  left  school  from  the  first  grade  and  was 
entirely  illiterate.  I  do  not  m^an  to  suggest  that  his  criticism 
was  just,  for  he  was  too  limited  in  experience  to  be  competent 
for  expert  judgment,  but  confessedly  to  "learn"  a  boy  "to  write 
pictures"  when  he  had  passed  to  his  thirteenth  year  and  is 
large  enough  to  have  an  economic  value  in  a  mill,  leaves  some- 
thing to  be  desired.  Nor  do  I  mean  that  we  should  limit 
our  schools  to  technical  training,  but  that  we  should  provide 
at  least  enough  to  establish  the  connection  in  the  child's  mind 
between  education  and  industrial  productivity. 

This  summary  of  the  varied  causes  of  the  ineffectiveness  of 
legislation,  gathered  from  the  experience  of  a  field  study  of 
the  problem,  is  intended  only  to  point  the  path  to  that  ideal 
standard  of  legislation  suggested  at  the  first — an  expression  of 
collective  will  of  the  people  so  high  in  principle  and  so  per- 
fectly adapted  to  realize  itself  in  fact  that  it  shall  accomplish 
the  adequate  protection  of  all  children. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.  29:  115-24.  January,  1907. 

Child  Labor  and  the  Nation.     Albert  J.  Beveridge. 

The  purpose  of  this  republic  is  to  make  a  better  type  of 
manhood  and  womanhood.  The  reason  for  free  institutions 
is  that  they  develop  nobler  human  characters  than  any  other 
institutions    develop.     The    meaning   of   a    democratic    form    of 


176  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

government  is  to  make  people  happier  and  better,  and  to  make 
life  more  worth  the  living.  The  glory  of  this  Nation  is  not 
in  the  exhaustless  fertility  of  our  far  flung  valleys  and  plains; 
not  in  the  amazing  wealth  of  o'\t  mines  of  coal,  and  iron,  and 
copper  and  gold;  not  in  our  tremendous  aggregation  of  riches; 
not  in  our  vast  network  of  railways;  not  in  our  astounding 
commerce  and  trade. 

All  these  are  splendid;  but  these  are  not  the  chief  sources 
of  our  pride.  No,  the  supreme  glory  of  the  American  people  is 
a  pure,  clean,  independent  citizenship — a  type  of  manhood  and 
womanhood,  sound  of  body,  clear  of  mind,  stout  of  heart, 
aspiring  of  soul.  And  to  become  such  a  human  being  as  that 
is  the  absolute  right  of  every  boy  and  girl  under  our  flag,  and 
any  system  which  prevents  any  American  boy  or  girl  from 
realizing  that  ideal  is  a  crime  against  humanity  and  treason 
against    liberty    itself. 

And  yet,  such  a  system  is  in  operation  this  very  night.  This 
very  night  this  crime  against  humanity  and  free  institutions  is  be- 
ing committed.  As  I  speak  to  you,  thousands  and  thousands  of 
little  children  are  at  work  in  cotton  mills,  in  glass  factories,  in 
the  sweat  shop,  and,  every  day,  on  the  breakers  of  the  mines. 
Their  bones  are  not  yet  hardened,  their  muscles  still  are  water, 
their  brains  are  still  the  brains  of  mfants.  They  are  in  that 
period  which  should  be  the  period  of  the  first  beginning  of  their 
growth,  the  period  when  the  whole  foundation  of  their  life's  de- 
velopment should  be  laid. 

And  yet,  the  very  materials  for  that  foundation  are  being  for- 
ever shattered.  Their  normal  growth  is  being  stopped,  their 
bones  made  crooked,  their  backs  bent  with  the  stoop  of  age,  their 
minds  stunted,  their  characters  malformed.  Weak  nerved,  vicious 
souled,  they  are  being  made  degenerate  by  a  system  of  greed,  as 
foolish  as  it  is  wicked.  For  a  child  to  work  upon  the  farm  is  a 
good  thing  if  he  is  not  forced  to  labor  beyond  his  strength.  I 
would  even  go  so  far,  although  many  might  object  to  it,  as  to  say, 
as  our  honorable  President  once  put  it — advocate  the  teaching  of 
children  to  work  properly  as  a  part  of  their  education.  But  the 
child  labor  which  I  denounce  is  the  child  destroying  labor  of  the 
factory,  the  sweat  shop  and  the  mines. 


CHILD   LABOR  I77 

This  maiming  of  the  bodies  of  the  American  children  goes 
forward.  This  murder  of  infant  characters  and  souls  is  being 
committed,  this  perversion  of  citizenship  is  being  done  to-night; 
and  in  committing  their  offense  against  God  and  man,  an  even 
greater  crime  is  committed  against  free  institutions  themselves. 
For  child  labor  is  daily  pouring  into  the  mass  of  American 
citizenship  streams  of  social  and  political  poison  which  will  be 
felt  for  ill  in  this  Republic  as  the  decades  pass.  As  these  children 
reach  what  should  be  the  conditions  of  maturity,  if  they  have  not 
already  been  put  in  their  graves,  they  become  unthinking  enemies 
of  society — irreclaimable  enemies,  because  the  injury  that  has 
been  done  to  them  can  never  be  undone,  nor  this  cost  repaid. 
When  they  grow  up  and  compare  themselves  with  other  young 
men  and  women,  they  clearly  see,  and  even  more  keenly  feel,  that 
they  are  inferior — inferior  in  body,  inferior  in  mind,  inferior  in 
soul,  not  inferior  naturally,  but  made  inferior  by  the  slavery  of 
their  infancy.  They  feel  that  they  have  been  robbed,  not  robbed 
of  money,  not  robbed  of  property ;  but  robbed  of  intellect,  health, 
character,  of  life  itself.  And  so  they  become,  all  over  the  land, 
living  engines  of  wrath  against  human  society  itself.  When  the 
lords  of  gold  tremble  for  the  safety  of  their  widespread  invest- 
ments, let  them  remember  that  child  labor  is  daily  creating  an 
element  in  this  republic  more  dangerous  to  their  physical  prop- 
erty itself  than  ever  was  packed  in  dynamiters'  bombs. 

This  danger  is  not  only  manifest  in  incendiary  fires,  and  all 
the  manifestations  with  which  we  are  so  familiar,  but  it  will  soon 
manifest  itself  in  votes  to  the  destruction  of  the  very  purposes 
and  reason  for  which  this  government  of  free  and  equal  men 
was  founded. 

I  think  I  understand  personally  exactly  how  these  young  men 
and  women  who,  as  Dr.  Adler  said,  had  been  exhausted  in  their 
youth,  feel  when  they  attain  manhood.  I  myself  began  physical 
labor  earlier  than  twelve,  hard  labor — too  hard  for  any  child  of 
eighteen  or  nineteen.  But  after  all,  that  was  in  the  open  air,  in 
the  field,  beautiful  with  the  waving  banners  of  the  corn,  and 
fragrant  with  the  smells  of  the  brown  earth,  upturned  by  the 
ploughshare;  it  was  on  the  grades  of  railways  with  great,  gross, 
rough,  but  vital  and  kindly  men  about  me,  it  was  in  the  logging 


178  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

camps,  with  the  majesty  of  the  woods  about  me.  It  was  bitter 
work;  it  was  too  heavy  for  any  child,  but,  after  all,  over  me 
by  day  always  was  the  marvelous  blue  of  God's  splendid  dome  or 
the  glory  of  his  clouds,  or  over  me  by  night  the  eternal  stars  kept 
their  sentinel  watch  and  always  there  was  the  pure  and  unpolluted 
atmosphere  to  breathe,  and  through  it  all,  now  and  then,  was 
the  uplifting  influence  of  religion,  and  finally  a  college,  and  then 
all  those  influences  of  the  true  and  the  beautiful  and  the  good  in 
life. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  that,  I  do  not  like  to  think  of  the  years 
from  twelve  to  nineteen,  because  it  makes  me  bitter.  But  sup- 
pose my  work  had  not  been  in  the  open  air?  Suppose  it  had 
been  in  the  cotton  mills  of  Georgia,  or  the  sweat  shops  of  New 
York,  or  the  glass  factories  of  West  Virginia,  or  on  the  breakers 
of  the  mines  of  Pennsylvania?  Suppose  I  had  been  forced  to 
breathe  the  poison  and  had  acquired  the  low  vices  and  habits 
which  always  result  from  such  physical  and  nervous  degeneracy. 
Even  if,  as  it  is,  a  senseless  and  unreasoning  resentment  begins 
to  burn  in  my  breast,  what  would  have  been  my  condition  of 
mind  if  I  had  lived  the  life  that  the  child  slaves  of  America  are 
living  to-night? 

Our  papers  contain  much  resentment  if  one  anarchist  is  found 
among  our  European  immigrants.  Yet,  we  are  at  work  creating 
the  same  sort.  And  this  not  the  worst;  for  these  young  men 
and  young  women,  who  as  children  are  overworked,  through 
their  veins  running  the  poison  of  an  unthinking  hatred,  become 
the  fathers  and  mothers  of  degenerate  children.  These  go  to 
work  at  the  same  system  that  made  their  parents  incapable 
of  having  perfect  children,  made  them  the  ancestors  of  a  race  of 
degenerates.  These  are  the  facts.  This  is  the  truth,  and  I  say 
to  you  to-night,  as  I  have  been  saying  all  over  this  country  for 
the  last  three  months,  that  this  making  of  possible  anarchists 
and  degenerates  in  America  has  got  to  be  stopped. 

We  cannot  leave  it  to  the  states  to  stop  it.  They  cannot  stop 
it  if  they  would,  and  they  would  not  stop  it  if  they  could.  In  the 
states,  for  example,  where  this  social  disease  is  most  violent,  the 
great  manufacturing  and  mining  interests  are  so  powerful  that 
they  prevent  the  passage  of  any  thorough  or  eff"ective  state  law. 


CHILD   LABOR  179 

or  they  do  what  is  a  great  deal  worse,  secure  the  passage  of  a 
mutilated  law,  leading  the  people  to  think  that  their  legislature 
has  done  all  they  could,  and  still  the  evil  goes  on.  And  often,  in 
these  states,  when  a  good  law  is  passed,  these  same  interests  re- 
main still  so  powerful  with  the  Executive  Department  that  the 
law  is  not  executed,  and  the  evil  goes  on.  Even  if  one  state  or  a 
dozen  states  were  to  pass  excellent  laws  and  thoroughly  enforce 
them,  not  much  would  be  accomplished,  because  the  evil  would 
exist  in  other  states,  and  still  go  on.  And  even  if  in  one,  or  a 
dozen  states,  good  laws  were  still  executed,  the  business  man 
in  the  good  state  would  be  at  a  disadvantage  to  the  business  man 
in  the  bad  state,  because  the  latter  could  employ  cheap  child  la- 
bor, and  the  business  man  in  the  good  state  could  not  employ 
cheap  child  labor.  .And  so.  by  this  system  of  trying  to  end  a 
national  evil  by  segregated  legislation,  the  very  quality  of  the 
.A.merican  citizen  is  destroyed. 

Here,  I  think,  is  the  generalization  which  decides  what  the 
state  should  do  and  what  the  Nation  must  do.  It  is  this,  when 
an  evil  is  a  national  evil,  it  must  be  cured  by  a  national  remedy. 
Where  the  evil  is  purely  local — where  it  is  confined  to  one  state 
and  no  other — that  state  might  possibly  be  left  to  cure  it.  For 
example,  if  child  labor  existed  in  no  place  in  the  United  States 
except  in  Ohio,  then  we  might,  perhaps,  consider  the  question  of 
leaving  to  Ohio  herself  the  curing  of  this  evil.  But  if  child  labor 
is  scattered  all  over  the  land,  if  some  states  are  clear  of  it,  and 
others  are  foul  with  it,  then  it  becomes  a  subject  for  the  com- 
bined intelligence  and  massed  morality  of  American  people  to 
handle.  And  even  if  every  state  in  the  Union  but  two  or  three 
were  to  remedy  the  evil  effectually,  still  those  two  or  three  states 
would  be  pouring  streams  of  bad  citizens  into  the  whole  Nation, 
and  the  whole  Nation  would  be  affected  by  them,  because  every 
citizen  is  a  citizen,  not  of  one  state  only,  but  the  Nation  as  a 
whole. 

And  so  we  see  clearly  that  this  matter  cannot  be  left  to  the 
states  to  handle,  first,  because  they  cannot  act  uniformly,  and  do 
not — never  have  on  any  subject,  not  on  any  subject.  Second,  they 
cannot  act  effectively,  even  if  they  were  so  disposed.  Third, 
where  one  state  acts  well,  and  another  state  acts  ill,  the  business 


i8o  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

man  in  the  latter  state  has  the  advantage  of  the  business  man  in 
the  former  state.  And  finally,  if  there  is  only  one  state  where 
the  infamous  practice  is  carried  on,  it  is  still  daily  pouring  pol- 
lution into  the  whole  body  of  American  citizenship. 

I  have  heard  it  said  the  past  week  in  conversation  on  the  floor 
of  the  senate — it  is  something  I  am  rather  familiar  with,  after 
seven  years  down  there — "Let  us  not  be  in  a  hurry  about  this 
thing."  Let  us  be  in  a  hurry  to  pass  a  currency  bill,  and  in  a 
hurry  pass  something  of  that  kind,  but  let  the  children  go.  They 
say,  "Well,  after  a  while,  in  time,  the  states  will  all  have  a  uni- 
form law,  uniformly  executed,  by  uniformly  good,  safe  and 
honest  governors."  Well,  if  such  an  impossible  day  should  ever 
come,  we  know  that  it  would  be  a  generation  from  now ;  and 
in  the  meantime,  the  murder  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Ameri- 
can children  would  go  on ;  in  the  meantime,  the  character  and 
souls  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  American  children  would  be 
ruined ;  in  the  meantime,  other  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Ameri- 
can children  would  be  forever  degenerate — made  into  engines 
of  wrath,  and  the  parents  of  still  other  hundreds  of  thousands 
engines  of  wrath. 

Shall  this  infamy  go  on?  Shall  this  undermining  of  the  very 
foundations  of  free  institutions  be  permitted  just  to  please  some 
well-meaning  theorists  on  the  one  hand,  and  some  selfish  dema- 
gogues and  millionaires  already  over-rich  with  unrighteous 
wealth  on  the  other  hand?  Shall  the  slaughter  of  the  innocents 
and  recruiting  of  this  swelling  army  of  degenerates  continue 
while  we  endlessly  debate,  in  Congress  and  elsewhere,  the  wis- 
dom of  curing  a  national  infamy  by  a  national  law? 

Why,  what  is  this  Republic  for?  What  are  free  institutions 
for?  Why  did  we  ever  establish  this  Nation  of  liberty?  What 
does  the  flag  mean?  What  do  all  these  things  mean,  if  they  do 
not  mean  the  making  of  a  splendid  race  of  clean,  strong,  happy, 
noble,  exalted  charactered  men  and  women.  The  life  of  one 
American  child,  the  making  of  one  American  citizen  is  worth 
one  hundred  years  of  academic  discussion  about  the  danger  of 
the  American  people  curing  national  evils  through  national  gov- 
ernment. 

We  hear  it  said  that  we  are  going  too  far  in  the  curing  of 
national   evils  by  national  laws.     But   isn't  the  contrary  true? 


CHILD   LABOR  i8i 

Have  we  not  been  straining  the  other  theory  in  preventing  and 
delaying  the  nation  from  remedying  the  evils  of  the  nation? 
Why  should  the  barrier  of  the  states  be  interposed  in  the 
national  reform  of  the  national  evil  of  child  labor?  To  be 
sure,  that  same  barrier  was  raised  against  the  meat  inspection 
bill,  but  the  aroused  conscience  of  the  American  people  swept 
it  away.  To  be  sure,  it  was  raised  against  the  pure  food  bill, 
but  the  American  people  said  that  the  health  and  lives  of  them- 
selves, their  wives  and  their  children  were  more  important  than 
some  theory  which  did  not  eflfect  them. 

Last  session  we  passed  unanimously  the  national  quarantine 
law.  Its  purpose  was  to  protect  the  ports  of  our  Gulf  states,  and 
our  Pacific  states,  from  yellow  fever  and  bubonic  plague.  It  was 
an  absolute,  unqualified  and  admitted  denial  of  the  rights  of 
those  states.  For  one  hundred  years  each  one  of  them  had  had 
its  own  quarantine  laws.  And  yet,  from  the  very  beginning, 
the  practical  human  folly  of  it  was  seen,  because  if  yellow  fever 
is  kept  out  of  the  ports  of  one  state  and  let  in  through  the  ports 
of  another  state,  it  affects  the  people  of  both  states  and  the 
whole  republic,  for  yellow  fever  is  no  respecter  of  state  lines. 
Yellow  fever  crosses  the  boundaries  of  state  without  stopping, 
just  as  the  telegraph  and  the  railroad,  and  our  agencies  of  good 
cross  state  lines  without  stopping.  Very  well,  if  the  theory  of 
state  rights  was  yielded  by  the  states  that  most  insisted  upon  them 
in  order  to  pass  the  quarantine  law  designed  to  prevent  yellow 
fever  which  kills  possibly  twenty  people  in  twenty  years,  cannot 
it  also  yield  to  the  national  child  labor  law  to  stop  that  crime 
which  kills  and  ruins  hundreds  of  thousands  of  American  chil- 
dren every  year? 

At  the  great  meeting  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion for  Western  Ohio  and  Eastern  Indiana,  held  at  Richmond, 
Indiana,  a  few  weeks  ago,  I  formally  gave  notice  that  at  the 
beginning  of  the  present  session,  I  would  introduce  a  bill  which 
would  cut  the  heart  out  of  this  evil  from  ocean  to  ocean,  and  that, 
having  introduced  it,  I  would  fight  this  session  and  the  next  ses- 
sion, and  every  other  session  so  long  as  I  was  in  public  life  until 
it  was  passed.  I  say  to  you  to-night  that  I  have  redeemed  that 
pledge.     I  have  introduced  that  bill,  and  I  repeat  to  you  that  I 


i82  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

shall  fight  for  it  this  session  as  I  fought  for  the  meat  inspection 
and  pure  food  bills  last  season,  and  will  fight  the  next  session, 
and  the  session  after,  if  its  enemies  can  for  so  long  delay  it,  until 
it  shall  be  passed. 

It  is  a  very  simple  bill,  a  very  brief  bill.  It  provides  that  the 
carriers  of  interstate  commerce,  the  railroads  and  the  steamboat 
lines,  shall  not  transport  the  products  of  any  factory  or  mine 
that  employes  or  permits  the  labor  of  children  under  fourteen 
years  of  age.  It  provides  for  any  officer  of  a  factory  or  mine, 
who  violates  that  act,  the  punishment  of  a  money  fine  and  a 
sentence  in  the  penitentiary. 

I  spoke  about  the  difference  between  this  and  the  meat  bill, 
and  I  will  confess  that  I  drew  them  on  different  theories.  I  will 
try  to  make  it  clear  to  you  why,  although  it  is  a  complicated  legal 
question.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  constitution,  which  was  made 
for  the  people  and  not  for  the  lawyers,  is  a  very  simple  in- 
strument. And  upon  that  point  I  wish  to  say  that  the  American 
people  were  not  made  for  the  constitution ;  the  constitution 
was  made  for  the  American  people.  It  is  our  servant;  we  are 
not  its  servants.  The  difference  between  the  meat  inspection 
bill  and  this  bill  is  just  this,  the  meat  bill  goes  directly  to  the 
evil  and  says  to  the  packing  houses  in  Illinois,  "If  your  products 
are  intended  for  interstate  commerce,  if  you  are  preparing  them 
to  ship  into  another  state,  that  is  enough,  railroad  or  no  rail- 
road, you  must  submit  to  the  inspection  of  these  products  and 
the  sanitation  of  these  factories  by  the  agents  of  the  American 
people's  national  government." 

I  at  first  thought  of  drawing  this  bill  on  these  lines,  and 
saying,  "Be  it  enacted,  that  no  factory  or  mine  whose  products 
are  intended  for  interstate  commerce  shall  employ  children  under 
fourteen  years  of  age,"  and  then  providing  a  fine  and  penalty. 
I  did  not  do  it.  I  will  frankly  say  here,  in  confidence  among 
ourselves — there  are  only  about  four  thousand  of  us  here  and 
I  am  sure  what  I  say  will  not  get  out — for  tactical  reasons : 
first,  because  it  takes  hard  work  to  get  any  of  these  bills 
through — we  never  would  have  gotten  the  meat  inspection  bill 
through  in  the  world  but  for  that  mighty  storm  of  wrath 
which   the   revealed    facts   aroused   from   ocean   to   ocean,    from 


CHILD   LABOR  183 

Mexico  to  the  Dominion,  and  even  as  it  was,  they  pulled  nearly 
all  the  teeth  out  of  the  bill— we  got  all  back  but  two— and  we 
almost  gained  those  two  when  we  finally  passed  the  bill.  I 
did  not  follow  the  strict  analogy  of  the  meat  bill  in  the  child 
labor  bill,  first  because  a  plausible  though  not  valid  constitu- 
tional argument  could  be  made  against  such  a  bill  as  that. 
Second,  because  I  feared  that  the  great  factory  interests  of  the 
south,  New  Jersey  and  of  Maine,  the  great  mining  interests 
everywhere,  would  all  combine  together  and  join  the  great 
packing  interests,  and  they  would  not  only  defeat  this  bill,  but 
possibly  overthrow  the  meat  bill,  too. 

It  will  be  a  hard  struggle  with  the  individual  interests  alone, 
and  I  do  not  particularly  care  to  tackle  them  in  combination 
with  all  the  other  trusts  there  are  in  the  country  at  the  same 
time. 

The  other  day  in  the  senate  somebody  said,  "I  wonder" — and 
then  looked  very  profound — "whether  the  men  who  drew  the 
interstate  commerce  clause  of  the  American  Constitution  ever 
contemplated  any  such  thing  as  we  are  doing?"  Why  certainly 
they  did  not.  Read  the  debates  on  the  interstate  commerce  clause 
in  the  national  convention,  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  years 
after  they  were  made.  I  remember  Mr.  Pinckney,  one  of  the 
ablest  men,  said,  in  discussing  this  clause,  "The  interstate  com- 
merce clause  was  designed  so  that  one  state  would  not  override 
the  other."  He  said,  "The  interests  of  New  England  are  and 
always  will  be  rum  and  fish."  He  said,  "The  interests  of  the 
Southern  states  are  and  always  will'  be  cotton  and  indigo ;  the 
great  agricultural  centers  of  the  country  are  and  always  will 
be  New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania,  and  New  York  is  the  only  one 
that  is  a  manufacturing  center  that  will  be  affected  by  free 
trade."  It  was  under  such  debates  as  that  that  the  interst^e 
commerce  clause  of  the  American  Constitution  was  formed. 
But  I  have  always  believed  that  every  one  of  the  saving  clauses 
in  that  instrument,  just  as  I  believed  that  everything  else  that 
"has  occurred  in  American  history  was  directed  from  above. 
And  when  I  have  thought  about  that  interstate  commerce  clause 
— how  it  enables  the  people,  who  are  one  people  with  one  flag,  to 
deal  with  each  other,  I  have  felt  how  true  were  the  words  of 


i84  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

Emerson  in  that  immortal  poem,  "The  Problem,"  and  how  true 
it  was  when  applied  to  the  interstate  commerce  clause: 

The  hand  that  rounded  Peter's  dome, 

That    crowns    the    hills   of   Christian    Rome, 

Wrought  in  a  sad  sincerity; 

Himself  from  God  he  could  not-  free, 

He  builded  better  than  he  knew. 

So  this  bill,  which  proposed  in  a  national  way  to  stop  this 
national  evil,  is  so  drawn  that  its  entire  constitutionality  is  freely 
admitted  by  its  foes.  It  is  so  simple  and  effective  that  both  its 
friends  and  enemies  alike  concede  that  it  will  stop  the  evil  in 
every  great  factory  and  mine  throughout  the  entire  republic.  It 
is  resisted  upon  the  following  grounds:  First,  that  perhaps,  as  a 
matter  of  policy,  we  are  going  a  little  too  fast  and  too  far  in  the 
expansion  of  national  power  to  the  curing  of  national  evils 
Second,  it  is  said  that  the  evils  of  child  labor  are  greatly 
overdrawn,  and  as  one  member  of  the  house  the  other  day  said, 
"This  is,  after  all,  only  a  storm  blown  up  by  some  of  those  re- 
formers;" and,  third,  it  is  a  mighty  good  thing  for  the  child  to 
have  it  work. 

Now  these  are  the  three  arguments  that  are  made  against 
this  bill.  These  are  the  points  you  will  see  discussed  in  the 
newspapers.  These  are  what  you  will  sec  in  the  reports  of  the 
debates  in  Congress.  In  Washington  all  the  public  men  are  for 
every  reform  of  every  evil — "if  it  exists,"  they  say.  They  want 
to  be  sure  that  it  "exists,"  you  know. 

Many  of  the  worst  enemies  of  reform  are  apparently  for  it, 
but  earnestly  against  any  effective  method  of  handling  it.  One 
of  the  most  effective  ways  of  defeating  any  great  reform  meas- 
ure is  for  its  enemies  to  divide  the  real  friends  of  the  reform 
into  different  groups,  each  earnestly  contending  as  to  which  is 
the  best  of  several  different  methods  of  curing  the  evil.  It  was 
the  favorite  tactics  of  the  great  Napoleon  on  the  battlefield  to 
so  maneuver  as  to  get  the  armies  of  the  enemy  separated  into 
smaller  armies,  and  then  subsequently  attacking  them  and  de- 
feating them  successively.  But  the  legislative  Napoleons  do  bet- 
ter than  that.  They  not  only  get  the  real  friends  of  the  reform 
divided  into  little  groups,  each  sincerely  attached  to  a  different 
method  of  effecting  the  reform,  but  they  so  maneuver  as  to  get 
these  groups  of  real  friends  of  the  reform  contending  among 


CHILD   LABOR  185 

each  other,  wasting  time,  and  energy,  and  strength,  instead  of 
uniting  for  a  common  cause  against  a  common  enemy  and  achiev- 
ing a  common  triumph.  And  wherever  the  enemies  of  a  reform 
have  got  its  friends  in  that  condition  their  victory  is  assured. 

My  friends,  the  time  has  come  when  we  have  got  to  get  right 
down  to  earnest  business  in  this  great  cause.  We  have  got  to 
appeal  to  the  intelligence,  the  hearts,  the  morality  of  the  Ameri- 
can people.  We  have  got  to  arouse  and  marshal  public  opinion 
upon  this  measure,  and  when  you  make  such  an  appeal  to  the 
American  people  they  will  not  fail  us,  for  they  never  have 
failed  to  respond  to  such  an  appeal.  And  when  the  American 
people  make  their  will  known  to  Congress,  Congress  will  act. 

There  is  just  one  thing  that  will  unfailingly  move  the  Ameri- 
can senate,  and  that  is  the  concentrated  and  crystallized  will  of 
the  American  people  spoken  in  terms  that  will  not  be  denied. 
Oh!  these  American  people — that  they  shall  be  increasingly  the 
mightiest  power  for  righteousness  and  human  helpfulness  in  this 
world,  is  the  passion  of  my  life.  Let  us  all  do  what  we  can  to 
help  make  thern  so.  We  glory  in  the  men  of  Concord  and  Valley 
Forge,  and  we  justly  glory  in  them.  Let  us  then  be  worthy  of 
their  deeds  and  their  memories,  and  cast  from  our  Nation  the 
body  of  this  death  to  which  it  is  bound.  Only  so  shall  our  flag  be 
unsullied;  only  so  shall  we  indeed  be  "a  people  whose  god  is  the 
Lord;"  and  only  so  shall  this  "government  of  the  people,  for 
the  people  and  by  the  people"  not  perish  from  the  earth. 

Annals    of    the    American   Academy.   31:    Sup.    56-8. 
May,  1908. 

What  Constitutes  Effective  Child  Labor  Laws. 

Effective  legislation  dealing  with  child  labor  involves  many 
differing  elements  including  the  child,  the  parent,  the  employer, 
the  officials  charged  with  the  duty  of  enforcing  the  statutes,  and 
finally  the  community  which  enacts  laws,  provides  schools  for 
the  children- when  they  are  prohibited  from  working,  supports 
and  authorizes  officers  for  the  enforcement  of  the  laws,  pre- 
scribes penalties  for  their  violation,  assists  dependent  families 
in  which  the  children  are  below  the  legal  age  for  work.     In  the 


i86  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

long  run,  the  effectiveness  of  the  law  depends  upon  the  con- 
science of  the  community  as  a  whole  far  more  than  upon  the 
parent  and  the  employer  acting  together. 

With  the  foregoing  reservations  and  qualifications  duly  em- 
phasized, the  following  summaries  are  believed  to  outline  the 
substance  of  the  effective  legislation  which  it  seems  reasonable 
to  try  to  secure  before  the  close  of  the  year  1910.  They  deal  only 
with  provisions  for  the  child  as  a  child,  taking  for  granted  the 
provisions  for  fire-escapes,  safeguards  for  machines,  toilet  facili- 
ties and  all  those  things  which  the  child  shares  with  the  adult 
worker. 

An  effective  child  labor  law  rests  primarily  upon  certain  def- 
inite prohibitions  among  which  are  the  following: 
Labor  is  Prohibited 

(i)  for  all  children  under  the  age  of  fourteen  years, 

(2)  for  all  children  under  sixteen  years  of  age  who  do  not 
measure  sixty  inches  and  weigh  eighty  pounds,* 

(3)  for  all  children  under  sixteen  years  of  age  who  cannot 
read  fluently  and  write  legibly  simple  sentences  in  the 
English  language,  and  have  not  completed  the  curriculum 

of  the  first  eight  years  of  the  public  schools, 

(4)  for  all  children  under  the  age  of  sixteen  years,  between 
the  hours  of  5  p.  m.  and  8.  a.  m.,  or  longer  than  eight 
hours  in  any  twenty-four  hours,  or  longer  than  forty-eight 

hours  in  any  week, 

(5)  for  all  children  under  the  age  of  sixteen  years  in  specified 
occupations  dangerous  to  life,   limb,  health   or  morals. 

The  Child 

Effective  legislation  requires  that  before  going  to  work  the 
child  satisfy  a  competent  officer  appointed  for  the  purpose, 
that  it 

(i)  is  fourteen  years  of  age,  and 

(2)  is  in  good  health,  and 

(3)  measures  at  least  sixty  inches  and  weighs  eighty  pounds, 
and 


*  This  measure  is  not  now  specified  in  any  statute  though  it  is  implied  in  the 
statutes  of  several  states. 


CHILD   LABOR  187 

(4)  is  able  to  read  fluently  and  write  legibly  simple  sentences 
in  the  English  language,  and 

(5)  has  attended  school  a  full  school  year  during  the  twelve 
months  next  preceding  going  to  work. 

The  Parent 

Effective  child-labor  legislation   requires  that  the   parent 
(i)  keep  the  child  in  school  to  the  age  of  fourteen  years  and 

longer  if  the  child  has  not  completed  its  required  school 

work,  and 

(2)  take  oath  as  to  the  exact  age  of  the  child  before  letting 
it  begin  to  work,  and 

(3)  substantiate  the  oath  by  producing  a  transcript  of  the 
official  record  of  the  birth  of  the  child,  or  the  record  of 
its  baptism,  or  some  other  religious  record  of  the  time  of 
the  birth  of   the  child,   and   must 

(4)  produce  the  record  of  the  child's  school  attendance, 
signed  by  the  principal  of  the  school  which  the  child 
last  attended. 

The  Employer 
Effective   child-labor   legislation    requires   that   the   employer 
before  letting  the  child  begin  to  work, 

(i)  obtain  and  place  on  file  ready  for  official  inspection 
papers   showing 

(a)  the  place  and  date  of  birth  of  the  child  substantiated  by 

(b)  the  oath  of  the  parent  corroborated  by 

(c)  a  transcript  of  the  official  register  of  births,  or  by  a 
transcript  of  the  record  of  baptism,  or  other  religious 
record  of  the  birth  of  the  child,  and  by 

(d)  the  school  record  signed  by  the  principal  of  the 
school  which  the  child  last  attended,  and  by 

(e)  the  statement  of  the  officer  of  the  Board  of  Education 
or  the  Board  of  Health  designated  for  the  purpose,  that 
he  has  approved  the  papers  and  examined  the  child. 

(2)  After  permitting  the  child  to  begin  to  work,  the  employer 
is  required  to  produce  the  foregoing  papers  on  demand 
of  the  school-attendance  officer,  the  health  officer  and  the 
factory  inspectors. 


i88  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

(3)  In  case  the  child  cease  to  work,  the  employer  must 
restore  to  the  child  the  papers  enumerated  above. 

(4)  During  the  time  that  the  child  is  at  work,  the  employer 
must  provide  suitable  seats,  and  permit  their  use  so  far  as 
the  nature  of  the  work  allows;  and  must 

(5)  post  and  keep  posted  in  a  conspicuous  place,  the  hours 
for  beginning  work  in  the  morning,  and  for  stopping 
work  in  the  middle  of  the  day;  the  hours  for  resuming 
work  and  for  stopping  at  the  close  of  the  day;  and  all 
work  done  at  any  time  not  specified  in  such  posted  notice 
constitutes  a  violation  of  the  law.  The  total  number  of 
hours  must  not  exceed  eight  in  any  one  day  or  forty-eight 
in  one  week. 

The  Officials 
Effective  legislation   for  the  protection  of  children  requires 
that  the  officials  entrusted  with  the  duty  of  enforcing  it 

(i)  give  their  whole  time,  not  less  than  eight  hours  of  every 
working  day,  to  the  performance  of  their  duties,  making 
night  inspections  when  ever  this  may  be  necessary  to  in- 
sure that  children  are  not  working  during  the  prohibited 
hours;  and 

(2)  treat  all  employers  alike,  irrespective  of  political  con- 
siderations of  race,  religion  or  power  in  a  community ; 

(3)  prosecute  all  violations  of  the  law ; 

(4)  publish  annual  reports  full,  clear  and  printed  promptly 
for  general  use  and  as  a  basis  for  legislation.  The  quarter- 
ly bulletin  issued  by  some  states  is  a  valuable  register  of 
efficiency  and  means  of  education  for  the  public. 

The  School 
The  best  child  labor  law  is  a  compulsory  education  law 
covering  forty  weeks  of  the  year  and  requiring  consecutive 
attendance  of  all  the  children  to  the  age  of  fourteen  years,  and 
until  sixteen  years,  unless  they  have  meanwhile  completed  a 
specified  portion  of  the  curriculum,  as  preferably  eight  years. 
It  is  never  certain  that  children  are  not  at  work,  if  they  are  out 
of  school.  In  order  to  keep  the  children,  however,  it  is  not 
enough  to  compel  attendance — the  school  must  be  modified  and 
adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  recent  immigrants  in  the  North  and 


CHILD  LABOR  189 

of  the  poor  whites  in  the  South,  affording  instruction  which  ap- 
peals to  the  parents  as  worth  having,  in  lieu  of  the  wages  which 
the  children  are  forbidden  to  earn,  and  appeals  to  the  children 
as  interesting  and  attractive.  No  child  labor  legislation  can  be 
regarded  as  effective  which  does  not  deal  with  these  facts. 

The  vacation  school  and  camp  promise  reinforcement  of  the 
child  labor  laws,  which  are  now  seriously  weakened  by  the  fact 
that  the  long  vacation  leaves  idle  upon  the  streets  children  whom 
employers  covet  by  reason  of  the  low  price  of  their  labor,  while 
parents,  greedy  for  the  children's  earnings  and  anxious  lest  the 
children  suffer  from  the  life  of  the  streets,  eagerly  seek  work  for 
them.  Nothing  could  be  worse  for  the  physique  of  the  school 
child  than  being  compelled  to  work  during  the  summer;  and  the 
development  of  the  vacation  school  and  vacation  camp  alone 
seems  to  promise  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  problem  of  the 
vacation  of  the  city  child  of  the  working  class. 
The  Community 

Effective  child  labor  legislation  places  upon  the  community 
many  duties,  among  which  are 

(i)  maintaining  officials — men  and  women — school-attendance 
officers,  health  officers,  and  factory  inspectors,  all  of  whom 
need 

(a)  salary  and  traveling  expenses, 

(b)  access  at  all  reasonable  times  to  the  places  where 
children  are  employed, 

(c)  Dower  to  prosecute  all  violations  of  the  statutes  affect- 
ing "working  children, 

(d)  tenure  of  office  so  effectively  assured  that  they  need 
not  fear  removal  from  office  in  consequence  of  prose- 
cuting powerful  offenders; 

(2)  imposing  penalties  so  reasonable  in  relation  to  the 
nature  of  the  offense  and  the  ability  of  the  offender  as 
to  appeal  to  the  sense  of  justice  of  officers  concerned 
and  make  the  work  of  enforcement  not  unduly  difficult; 

(3)  maintaining  schools  in  which  to  educate  the  children  who 
are  prohibited  from  working; 

(4)  maintaining  vital  statistics,  especially  birth  records,  such 
that  the  real  age  of  native  children  may  be  readily  as- 
certained ; 


190  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

(5)  maintaining  provision  for  the  adequate  relief  of  depen- 
dent families  in  which  the  children  are  not  yet  of  legal 
age  for  beginning  work. 

More  important,  however,  than  the  enactment  of  the  foregoing 
provisions  is  the  maintenance  in  the  community  of  a  persistent, 
lively  interest  in  the  enforcement  of  the  child  labor  statutes. 
Without  such  interest,  judges  do  not  enforce  penalties  against 
offending  parents  and  employers;  inspectors  become  discouraged 
and  demoralized;  or  faithful  officers  are  removed  because  they 
have  no  organized  backing,  while  some  group  of  powerful  indus- 
tries clamors  that  the  law  is  injuring  its  interest.  Well-meaning 
employers  grow  careless,  infractions  become  the  rule  and  work- 
ingmen  form  the  habit  of  thinking  that  laws  inimical  to  their 
interest  are  enforced,  while  those  framed  in  their  interest  are 
broken  with  impunity. 

Upon  parents  there  presses  incessant  poverty,  urging  them  to 
seek  opportunities  for  wage-earning,  even  for  the  youngest  chil- 
dren; and  upon  the  employers  presses  incessant  competition, 
urging  them  to  reduce  the  pay-roll  by  all  means,  fair  and  foul. 
No  law  enforces  itself ;  and  no  officials  can  enforce  a  law  which 
depends  upon  them  alone.  It  is  only  when  they  are  consciously 
the  agents  of  the  will  of  the  people  that  they  can  make  the  law 
really  protect  the  children  effectively. 

Annals  of  the  American  Academy.   31:   Sup.  59-62. 
May,  1908. 

Standard  Child  Labor  Law. 

The  best  provisions  of  the  law  of  Illinois,  Massachusetts, 
New  York,  Ohio,  and  Wisconsin  have  been  included  in  the 
Standard  Child  Labor  Law  which  follows: 

Be  it  Enacted,  etc.,  as  follows: 

Sec.  I.  No  child  under  fourteen  years  of  age  shall  be  em- 
ployed, permitted  or  suffered  to  work  in,  or  in  connection  with, 
any  factory,  workshop,  mercantile  establishment,  store,  busi- 
ness office,  telegraph  or  telephone  office,  restaurant,  bakery, 
hotel,  apartment  house  or  in  the  distribution  or  transmission 
of  merchandise   or  messages.    It   shall   be   unlawful   for  any 


CHILD   LABOR  191 

person,  firm  or  corporation  to  employ  any  child  under  four- 
teen years  of  age  in  any  business  or  service  whatever,  during 
any  part  of  the  term  during  which  the  public  schools  of  the 
district  in  which  the  child  resides  are  in  session. 

Sec.  2.  No  child  between  fourteen  and  sixteen  years  of  age 
shall  be  employed,  permitted  or  suffered  to  work  in  any 
factory,  workshop  or  mercantile  establishment  unless  the 
person  or  corporation  employing  him  procures  and  keeps  on 
file  and  accessible  to  the  truant  oflficers  of  the  town  or  city, 
and  to  the  inspectors  of  factories,  an  employment  certificate 
as  hereinafter  prescribed,  and  keeps  two  complete  lists  of 
all  such  children  employed  therein,  one  on  file  and  one 
conspicuously  posted  near  the  principal  entrance  of  the 
building  in  which  such  children  are  employed.  On  termination 
of  the  employment  of  a  child  so  registered,  and  whose 
certificate  is  so  filed,  such  certificate  shall  be  forthwith  sur- 
rendered by  the  employer  to  the  child  or  its  parent  or 
guardian  or  custodian.  The  inspector  of  factories  may  make 
demand  on  an  employer  in  whose  factory  a  child  apparently 
under  the  age  of  sixteen  years  is  employed  or  permitted  or 
suffered  to  work,  and  whose  employment  certificate  is  not  then 
filed  as  required  by  this  article,  that  such  employer  shall  either 
furnish  him  within  ten  days,  evidence  satisfactory  to  him 
that  such  child  is  in  fact  over  sixteen  years  of  age,  or  shall 
cease  to  employ  or  permit  or  suffer  such  child  to  work  in 
such  factory.  The  inspector  of  factories  may  require  from 
such  employer  the  same  evidence  of  age  of  such  child  as 
is  required  on  the  issuance  of  an  employment  certificate; 
and  the  employer  furnishing  such  evidence  shall  not  be  re- 
quired to  furnish  any  further  evidence  of  the  age  of  the 
child.  In  case  such  employer  shall  fail  to  produce  and  deliver 
to  the  inspector  of  factories  within  ten  days  after  such 
demand  such  evidence  of  age  herein  required  by  him,  and 
shall  thereafter  continue  to  employ  such  child  or  permit  or 
suffer  such  child  to  work  in  such  factory,  proof  of  the  giving 
of  such  notice  and  of  such  failure  to  produce  and  file  such 
evidence   shall   be   prima   facie   evidence   in   any   prosecution 


192  SELECTED  ARTICLES 

brought  for  a  violation  of  this  article  that,  such  child  is  under 
sixteen  years  of  age  and  is  unlawfully  employed. 

Sec.  3.  An  employment  certificate  shall  be  approved  only 
by  the  superintendent  of  schools  or  by  a  person  authorized 
by  him  in  writing,  or,  where  there  is  no  superintendent  of 
schools,  by  a  person  authorized  by  the  school  committee; 
provided  that  no  member  of  a  school  committee  or  other 
person  authorized  as  aforesaid  shall  have  authority  to  ap- 
prove such  certificate  for  any  child  then  in  or  about  to 
enter  his  own  employment,  or  the  employment  of  a  firm  or 
corporation  of  which  he  is  a  member,  officer  or  employee. 
.  Sec.  4.  The  person  authorized  to  issue  employment  certif- 
icate shall  not  issue  such  certificate  until  he  has  received, 
examined,  approved  and  filed  the  following  papers  duly 
executed:  (i)  The  school  record  of  such  child  properly 
filled  out  and  signed  as  provided  in  this  article.  (2)  A  pass- 
port or  duly  attested  transcript  of  the  certificate  of  birth 
or  baptism  or  other  religious  record,  showing  the  date  and 
place  of  birth  of  such  child.  A  duly  attested  transcript  of 
the  birth  certificate  filed  according  to  law  with  a  registrar 
of  vital  statistics,  or  other  officer  charged  with  the  duty  of 
recording  births,  shall  be  conclusive  evidence  of  the  age  of 
such  child.  (3)  The  affidavit  of  the  parent  or  guardian  or 
custodian  of  a  child,  which  shall  be  required,  however,  only 
in  case  such  last  mentioned  transcript  of  the  certificate  of 
birth  be  not  produced  and  filed,  showing  the  place  and  date  of 
birth  of  such  child;  which  affidavit  must  be  taken  before  the 
officer  issuing  the  employment  certificate,  who  is  hereby  au- 
thorized and  required  to  administer  such  oath,  and  who  shall 
not  demand  or  receive  a  fee  therefor.  Such  employment  certif- 
icate shall  not  be  issued  until  such  child  further  has  per- 
sonally appeared  before  and  been  examined  by  the  officer 
issuing  the  certificate,  and  until  such  officer  shall,  after 
making  such  examination,  sign  and  file  in  his  office  a  state- 
ment that  the  child  can  read  and  legibly  write  simple  sen- 
tences in  the  English  language  and  that  in  his  opinion  the 
child   is   fourteen   years   of   age    or   upwards   and   has   reached 


CHILD   LABOR  193 

the  normal  development  of  child  of  its  age,  and  is  in 
sound  health  and  is  physically  able  to  perform  the  work 
which  it  intends  to  do.  In  doubful  cases  such  physical  fitness 
shall  be  determined  by  a  medical  officer  of  the  board  or  depart- 
ment of  health.  Every  such  employment  certificate  shall  be  signed, 
in  the  presence  of  the  officer  issuing  the  same,  by  the  child  in 
whose  name  it  is  issued. 

Sec.  5.  Such  certificate  shall  state  the  date  and  place  of 
birth  of  the  child,  and  describe  the  color  of  the  hair  and  eyes, 
the  height  and  weight  and  any  distinguishing  facial  marks  of 
such  child,  and  that  the  papers  required  by  the  preceding 
section  have  been  duly  examined,  approved  and  filed  and 
that  the  child  named  in  such  certificate  has  appeared  before 
the  officer  signing  the   certificate  and   been   examined. 

Sec.  6.  The  school  record  required  by  this  article  shall 
be  signed  by  the  principal  or  chief  executive  officer  of  the 
school  which  such  child  has  attended  and  shall  be 'furnished, 
on  demand,  to  a  child  entitled  thereto.  It  shall  contain  a 
statement  certifying  that  the  child  has  regularly  attended 
the  public  schools  or  schools  equivalent  thereto  or  parochial 
schools  for  not  less  than  one  hundred  and  sixty  days  during 
the  school  year  previous  to  his  arriving  at  the  age  of  fourteen 
years  or  during  the  year  previous  to  applying  for  such  school 
record  and  is  able  to  read  and  write  simple  sentences  in  the 
English  language,  and  has  received  during  such  period  in- 
struction in  reading,  spelling,  writing,  English  grammar  and 
geography  and  is  familiar  with  the  fundamental  operations 
of  arithmetic  up  to  and  including  fractions.  Such  school 
record  shall  also  give  the  age  and  residence  of  the  child  as 
shown  on  the  records  of  the  school  and  the  name  of  its 
parent  or  guardian  or  custodian. 

Sec.  7.  The  local  board  of  education  or  the  school  com- 
mittee of  a  city,  village  or  town,  shall  transmit,  between  the 
first  and  tenth  day  of  each  month,  to  the  office  of  the  factory 
inspector,  a  list  of  the  names  of  the  children  to  whom  certifi- 
cates have  been  issued. 

Sec.  8.  No  boy  under  the  age  of  sixteen  years  and  no  girl  under 
the  age  of  eighteen  years  shall  be  employed,  suffered  or  per- 


194  SELECTED   ARTICLES 

mitted  to  work  at  any  gainful  occupation  more  than  forty- 
eight  hours  in  any  one  week,  nor  more  than  eight  hours  in 
any  one  day;  or  before  the  hour  of  seven  o'clock  in  the 
morning   or   after   the   hour  of  five   o'clock  in   the   evening. 

Any  child  working  in  or  in  connection  with  any  of  the 
aforesaid  establishments,  or  in  the  distribution  or  trans- 
mission of  merchandise  or  messages,  who  refuses  to  give  to 
the  inspector  his  or  her  name,  age  and  place  of  residence, 
shall  be  forthwith  conducted  by  the  inspector  to  the  office 
of  the  judge  of  the  juvenile  or  probate  court  for  examination. 
Every  employer  shall  post  in  a  conspicuous  place  in  every 
room  where  such  minors  are  employed  a  printed  notice 
stating  the  hours  required  of  them  each  day  of  the  week, 
the  hours  of  commencing  and  stopping  work  and  the  hours 
when  the  time  or  times  allowed  for  dinner  or  for  other  meals 
begin  and  end.  The  printed  form  of  such  notice  shall  be 
furnished  by  the  State  Inspector  of  Factories,  and  the  em- 
ployment of  any  minor  for  longer  time  in  any  day  so  stated 
shall  be  deemed  a  violation  of  this  section. 

Sec.  9.  Whoever  employs -a  child  under  sixteen  years 
of  age,  and  whoever  having  under  his  control  a  child  under 
such  age  permits  such  child  to  be  employed  in  violation  of 
sections  one,  two,  or  eight  of  this  act,  shall,  for  such  offense, 
be  fined  not  more  than  fifty  dollars;  and  whoever  continues 
to  employ  any  child  in  violation  of  either  of  said  sections  of 
this  act  after  being  notified  by  a  truant  officer  or  an  inspector 
of  factories  thereof,  shall  for  every  day  thereafter  that  such  em- 
ployment continues,  be  fined  not  less  than  five  nor  more 
than  twenty  dollars.  A  failure  to  produce  to  a  truant  officer 
or  inspector  of  factories  any  employment  certificate  or  list 
required  by  this  act  shall  be  prima  facie  evidence  of  the 
illegal  employment  of  any  person  whose  employment  certif- 
icate is  not  produced  or  whose  name  is  not  so  listed.  Any 
corporation  or  employer  retaining  employment  certificates  in 
violation  of  section  five  of  this  act  shall  be  fined  ten  dollars. 
Every  person  authorized  to  sign  the  certificate  prescribed 
by  section   five   of  this  act  who  knowingly  certifies  to  any 


CHILD  LABOR  195 

materially  false  statement  therein  shall  be  fined  not  more 
than  fifty  dollars. 

Sec.  10.  Truant  officers  may  visit  the  factories,  workshops 
and  mercantile  establishments  in  their  several  towns  and 
cities  and  ascertain  whether  any  minors  are  employed  therein 
contrary  to  the  provisions  of  this  act,  and  they  shall  report 
any  cases  of  such  illegal  employment  to  the  school  committee 
and  to  the  inspector  of  factories.  Inspectors  of  factories  and 
truant  officers  may  require  that  the  employment  certificates 
and  lists  provided  for  in  this  act,  of  minors  employed  in  such 
factories,  v^orkshops  or  mercantile  establishments,  shall  be 
produced  for  their  inspection.  Complaints  for  offenses  under 
this  act  shall  be  brought  by  inspectors  of  factories. 

Sec,  II.  No  child  under  the  age  of  sixteen  years  shall  be 
employed,  permitted  or  suffered  to  work  at  any  of  the 
following  occupations:  Sewing  machine  belts,  in  any  work- 
shop or  factory  or  assisting  in  sewing  machine  belts  in  any 
workshop  or  factory  in  any  capacity  whatever;  adjusting  any 
belt  to  any  machinery;  oiling,  or  assisting  in  oiling,  wiping 
or  cleaning  machinery;  operating,  or  assisting  in  operating, 
circular  or  band  saws,  wood-shapers,  wood-jointers  planers, 
sand-paper  or  wood-polishing  machinery;  picker  machine,  or 
machines  used  in  picking  wool,  cotton,  hair  or  any  upholster- 
ing material ;  paper-lacing  machines,  leather-burnishing  ma- 
chines, burnishing  machines  in  any  tannery  or  leather  manufact- 
ory; job  or  cylinder  printing  presses  operated  by  power  other 
than  foot ;  emery  or  polishing  wheels  used  for  polishing  metal ; 
wood-turning  or  boring  machinery ;  stamping  machines  used  in 
sheet  metal  and  tinware  manufacturing;  stamping  machines 
in  washer  and  nut  factories;  corrugating  rolls,  such  as  are 
used  in  roofing  and  washboard  factories;  steam  boilers,  steam 
machinery,  or  other  steam  generating  apparatus;  dough 
brakes  or  cracker  machinery  of  any  description;  wire  or  iron 
straightening  machinery;  rolling  mill  machinery,  punches  or 
shears;  washing,  grinding  or  mixing  mills;  calender  rolls 
in  rubber  manufacturing;  laundering  machinery;  passenger  or 
freight  elevators;   nor  in  any  capacity  in  preparing  any  com- 


196  CHILD  LABOR 

position  in  which  dangerous  or  poisonous  acids  are  used; 
manufacture  of  paints,  colors  or  white  lead;  dipping,  dyeing 
or  packing  matches;  manufacturing,  packing,  or  storing 
powder,  dynamite,  nitro-glycerine,  compounds,  fuses  or  other 
explosives;  manufacture  of  goods  for  immoral  purposes;  nor 
in  any  tobacco  warehouse,  cigar  or  other  factory  where 
tobacco  is  manufactured  or  prepared;  nor  as  pin-boys  in 
bowling  alleys;  nor  in  or  about  any  distillery,  brewery,  or 
any  other  establishment  where  malt  or  alcholic  liquors  are 
manufactured,  packed,  wrapped  or  bottled;  nor  in  any  hotel, 
theater,  concert  hall,  drug  store,  saloon,  or  place,  of  amuse- 
ment wherein  intoxicating  liquors  are  sold;  nor  in  any  other 
employment  that  may  be  considered  dangerous  to  their  lives 
and  limbs,  or  where  their  health  may  be  injured  or  morals 
depraved;  nor  shall  females  under  the  age  of  sixteen  years  be 
employed  in  any  capacity  where  such  employment  compels 
them  to    remain  standing  constantly. 


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